After college, while working for GTE Hawaiian Tel, Ige took graduate courses at UH and earned a Master of Business Administration degree in decisions sciences.
Prior to being elected governor of Hawaii, Ige served as program/project manager with Robert A. Ige and Associates, Inc., vice president of engineering at NetEnterprise, and project engineer/senior principal engineer at Pihana Pacific, which established the first world-class data center and carrier-neutral Internet exchange in Hawaii and the Pacific.