Really? Scientific, market-driven people who somehow hate to use and copy others' technology and engineering innovations? I doubt it. I think some people overstate the Elders' spirituality, the reason why Ubuntu Party rose to power is because of economic and infrastructure achievements - something that needs engineering and science. And that goes double for Mars and Jupiter, where spirituality isn't enough to tide them into the Federation. Intra-system jumpgates, for example, reduce the cost of trade by not requiring every ship to have jump drives (although it's probably not an useful innovation to the GTVA, their development is spread out over different systems, though down the road it could be useful as worlds develop).
Story-wise, I don't really see why an engineering cool-guy will improve the story, there are plenty of Martian not-very-Ubuntu people in the story and maybe we'll see some Jovian characters down the line. But people think it's cool, whatever.