Newly hired National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency developers graduated from a GIS programming course at LaunchCode in St. Louis June 29.

The employees beefed up their knowledge about Java, GeoServer and more during the 13-week class at LaunchCode.

NGA and LaunchCode created the training to help newly-hired NGA developers and coders, who come from a variety of backgrounds and experience levels, be ready to be GIS developers, said Jim Lewis, NGA software developer.

The goal of the class was to help new employees form a baseline of knowledge coming into their NGA careers, Lewis said.

LaunchCode built the curriculum for the course with input from NGA’s lead developers, Lewis said. Topics include Java, JavaScript, Test Driven Development, Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment, Pivotal Cloud Foundary, GeoServer, ElasticSearch and more.

This was NGA’s second class of employees to go through the training. Lewis said a third class is tentatively planned for August.

NGA started a partnership with LaunchCode last year to find talent for the agency.

“Through our partnerships with education, in particular, we can groom the workforce today to be competitive for jobs of tomorrow,” said NGA’s West Executive Brett Markham, in a March 2018 interview with St. Louis Public Radio.