Florida High Tech Corridor

The Florida High Tech Corridor is a regional economic development organization covering 23 Florida counties and anchored by the University of Central Florida, the University of South Florida and the University of Florida.

The organization describes its footprint as running from the Suncoast to the Space Coast and says it is led by the presidents of the three universities (Florida High Tech Corridor, About). Its stated mission includes aligning opportunities and resources in academia, industry and economic development across the region.

A separate federal program also covers 23 Florida counties. The NSF Florida Semiconductor Engine serves 23 counties from Tampa Bay through Orlando to the Space Coast and counts 114 private companies in that region focused on high-performance semiconductor development and packaging (NSF Florida Semiconductor Engine).

The Corridor dates itself to 1996 and began as the I-4 High Tech Corridor Council, after the presidents of UCF and USF met with CEOs and officials from 15 high-tech industries for the council's first official meeting.

The organization's timeline names GTE, AT&T, Lucent Technologies, Lockheed, Harris, Oracle and Schwartz Electro-optics among the founding industry participants and says the first council served the 21 counties in the UCF and USF service areas (Florida High Tech Corridor timeline). Articles of incorporation later converted it into the Florida High Tech Corridor Council Inc. When the University of Florida joined, Alachua and Putnam counties were added, bringing the region to 23 counties.

The same timeline records the Corridor and UCF joining Osceola County Government in supporting plans for the Florida Advanced Manufacturing Research Center in Kissimmee's NeoCity, now known as BRIDG (Corridor timeline). FloridaCommerce lists Osceola County's NeoCity semiconductor fabrication facility among the public platforms it considered when setting the state's target industries (FloridaCommerce Target Industry Report 2025).

The Corridor's Matching Grants Research Program pays up to $150,000 per project to match a company's own investment in applied research led by UCF or USF faculty.

The program page sets the rules (Matching Grants Research Program): a faculty member applies as principal investigator together with the company, the company must have a presence in the 23-county region and work in one of ten target technology sectors, every project must involve graduate or undergraduate students, and the Corridor's money goes to the university research team. Applications are taken on a rolling basis with no deadline, and the program lists more than 400 industry partners. The current page names only UCF and USF as research partners, although UF is one of the Corridor's three anchor universities.

The timeline gives the program's long-run scale: a $150 million milestone at which the Corridor's $48 million had been matched by $103 million from more than 250 partners across 715 projects, and a later measurement by UCF, USF and UF of more than $1 billion in downstream impact from the program's applied research over 20 years (Corridor timeline). Those are the organization's own figures.

Florida's private computer systems design firms averaged 138,413 jobs in 2025, the largest of the technology industries in the table below, paying $151,905 a year on average.

The table lists the main technology industries in the 2025 Florida wage file (BLS QCEW 2025, Florida statewide file).

Inside computer systems design, custom programming shops employed 62,381 at $159,190 and systems integrators 55,573 at $148,310, the latter losing 949 jobs over the year (BLS QCEW 2025, Florida). On the hardware side, all computer and electronic product manufacturing in Florida employed 46,819 people statewide at $123,517 on average, down 1,165 jobs, or 2.4 percent, in 2025.

Most of these lines were flat or shrinking in 2025; only research and development and software publishing added jobs (BLS QCEW 2025). The state's broader Information Technology target industry, which includes emerging technologies and cybersecurity, counts 326,111 jobs at an average wage of $128,301, with 34,611 more jobs forecast by 2028 (FloridaCommerce Target Industry Report 2025).

Orange County has the largest computer systems design workforce of any Florida county, 14,333 jobs in 2025, while Brevard County leads in instrument manufacturing.

Miami-Dade County followed Orange with 12,917 computer systems design jobs after growing 10.2 percent, and Hillsborough County had 12,594 after losing 1,480 jobs, a 10.5 percent drop (BLS QCEW 2025, NAICS 5415 by county). Pinellas County added 2.8 percent to reach 6,670. Average pay ran from $132,645 in Hillsborough to $154,954 in Orange and $167,568 in Miami-Dade.

Hardware work is concentrated differently. Brevard County's 45 navigation, measuring and control instrument makers employed 6,695 people at $135,335 on average, followed by Pinellas County with 3,686 jobs, Marion County with 1,496 and Orange County with 1,056 (BLS QCEW 2025, NAICS 3345 by county).

NSF singles out advanced semiconductor packaging for the Tampa Bay to Space Coast region, and FloridaCommerce highlights the Central Florida modeling, simulation and training industry.

NSF reports that its Florida Semiconductor Engine drew $23 million in private capital and research investment in its first two years, that Northrop Grumman and L3Harris expanded semiconductor capabilities in Florida, and that all 28 Florida state colleges can now offer the state's first associate of science degree in semiconductor engineering technology (NSF Florida Semiconductor Engine). Its focus technologies include advanced packaging, heterogeneous integration, photonics and wide-bandgap materials for aerospace, defense and medical uses.

FloridaCommerce describes Florida's modeling, simulation and training industry, anchored in Central Florida, as generating more than $6 billion a year in defense contracts and as home to the National Center for Simulation and the U.S. Army's Simulation and Training Technology Center (FloridaCommerce Target Industry Report 2025). The aerospace and defense guides in this section cover those employers in more detail.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, with the Corridor's about, timeline and matching grant pages, the NSF Florida Semiconductor Engine page, the FloridaCommerce 2025 target industry report and three BLS 2025 wage files for Florida tech industries and counties.