  Achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) demands adequate levels
of awareness and actions to address sustainability challenges. Software systems
will play an important role in moving towards these targets. Sustainability
skills are necessary to support the development of software systems and to
provide sustainable IT-supported services for citizens. While there is a
growing number of academic bodies, including sustainability education in
engineering and computer science curricula, there is not yet comprehensive
research on the competencies and skills required by IT professionals to develop
such systems. This study aims to identify the industrial sustainability needs
for education and training from software engineers' perspective. We conducted
interviews and focus groups with experts from twenty-eight organisations with
an IT division from nine countries to understand their interests, goals and
achievements related to sustainability, and the skills and competencies needed
to achieve their goals. Our findings show that organisations are interested in
sustainability, both idealistically and increasingly for core business reasons.
They seek to improve the sustainability of processes and products but encounter
difficulties, like the trade-off between short-term financial profitability and
long-term sustainability goals. To fill the gaps, they have promoted in-house
training courses, collaborated with universities, and sent employees to
external training. The acquired competencies make sustainability an integral
part of software development. We conclude that educational programs should
include knowledge and skills on core sustainability concepts, system thinking,
soft skills, technical sustainability, sustainability impact and measurements,
values and ethics, standards and legal aspects, and advocacy and lobbying.
