The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security is stepping up efforts to nurture more digital technology engineers and build up a certification standard to improve the management of the profession, Guangming Daily reported.

Such engineers work in the smart manufacturing, big data, block chain and integrated circuit industries and the ministry aims to train 80,000 a year in the future, it said.

Li Jinsheng, an official from the ministry, told the newspaper that highly skilled digital technology engineers offer fundamental support to the development of the nation's digital economy and the ministry has set up some basic standards, training and evaluation systems for the profession, along with policy support.

The ministry updated the State-level occupational dictionary last year to include 13 new professions such as smart manufacturing engineer and big data engineer in the digital technology engineer category.