The New Space Hiring Paradox

Sep 24

7 min read

Why rejecting experienced engineers could slow the next generation of missions

Recruitment for Space SMEs - Ian Stammers

Why Dismissing Engineers from Large Space Primes Is Costing You Talent

“They’re a good systems engineer, but they’ve only worked at a prime.”

I hear versions of this more often than I should. A candidate has spent years solving difficult spacecraft problems, perhaps on a GEO programme at Airbus, Thales Alenia Space, Northrop Grumman or Lockheed Martin. Yet the moment a smallsat company sees the employer and the mission type, the CV is put aside. The assumption is that this engineer will struggle with a faster, less structured environment.

Sometimes that concern is justified. A company building and testing spacecraft in rapid cycles needs people who can make sound decisions with incomplete information, work across disciplines and take responsibility when hardware does not behave as expected. Experience on a long institutional programme does not automatically prepare someone for that.

But neither does a New Space logo on a CV.

If you keep treating company pedigree as proof of working style, you will compete for the same narrow group of engineers while overlooking people who could help you scale.

Why New Space companies hire this way

The pressure is real. A venture moving from a handful of prototypes to repeatable production cannot spend months waiting for decisions to pass through several layers. A systems engineer may have to translate a customer mission into requirements, make power and communications trades, resolve an interface problem with AIT and help get the next spacecraft through test. A manufacturing or quality engineer may need to improve throughput without losing traceability or mission assurance.

Founders and engineering leaders look for evidence that someone has operated at that tempo. They often favour engineers from other smallsat, launch or defence technology businesses because those candidates may already know the realities of fast iterations, hands-on integration and changing priorities.

That preference has a rational basis. ESA itself describes a need for shorter, more agile development cycles in the changing space economy. [1]

The mistake comes when a useful question — can this person succeed in our environment? — becomes a crude filter: have they worked for one of these companies?

Consider Airbus. It builds traditional GEO satellites, but it has also developed serial production for the OneWeb constellation in Toulouse and Florida. Its smallsat work crosses the very boundary that hiring teams sometimes draw around the word “prime”. [2, 3]

The work matters more than the badge.

The cost of a closed talent pool

When every scaling venture targets the same small group of engineers with direct high-volume LEO experience, several things happen.

First, competition intensifies for people who may already have good reasons to stay: compelling missions, unvested equity, strong teams or a clear route to greater responsibility. Equity does not make everyone immobile, and frequent moves are not an inevitable feature of early careers. These are individual circumstances to understand in a conversation, not assumptions to apply to a generation.

Second, the hiring specification becomes self-limiting. A firm asks for someone who has already built its exact spacecraft type, at its exact production rate, in its exact location, with the right clearance or work authorisation. Some constraints are essential. Stacking all of them together can make an already specialist search almost impossible.

Third, excellent adjacent experience disappears from view. A prime engineer may have led subsystem trades, managed difficult interfaces, worked through non-conformances or taken flight hardware through qualification. Those are highly relevant capabilities. What may be missing is familiarity with the particular pace, product architecture or decision rights of the new employer. Those gaps can often be taught more readily than deep engineering judgement.

This is not an argument to hire every engineer from a prime. It is an argument to assess the actual gap before rejecting them.

Start with a better job advert

Too many adverts list products, tools and previous employers by implication. They say “New Space experience essential” when the real requirement is something more precise.

If the job involves fast decisions and hands-on delivery, say so.

For example:

You will turn early customer mission needs into spacecraft requirements and trades, working directly with power, RF, software and AIT colleagues. You will be comfortable making documented engineering decisions before every answer is known, testing assumptions quickly and changing course when evidence demands it. Experience with smallsats is valuable; we also welcome engineers from other spacecraft programmes who can show how they have worked across interfaces, owned hardware outcomes and adapted to a faster delivery cycle.

That wording tells candidates what the job feels like. It invites evidence of relevant behaviour without pretending that a GEO spacecraft and a CubeSat are technically interchangeable.

Separate the requirements into three groups: what must be present on day one, what can be learned with support, and what is simply preferred. Be particularly honest about export controls, citizenship, security clearance, hands-on test experience and location where they genuinely constrain the role.

Talent advisor in Space industry - Ian Stammers

Assess adaptability through work, not stereotypes

I would give candidates from different backgrounds the same realistic problem. For a systems engineer, that might be a short customer mission brief with mass, power, communications and schedule constraints. Ask them to identify the first trades, the unknowns they would test, the interfaces at risk and what they would decide this week versus later.

Then use a structured interview to probe examples: When did you make a decision with imperfect information? How did you handle a failed test? What did you change after feedback from manufacturing or AIT? What did you personally own?

An early, job-relevant assessment can help explore working preferences. But a personality questionnaire cannot determine on its own whether someone will thrive in New Space. Any test should be demonstrably valid for its purpose, applied consistently and combined with work evidence and structured interviews. CIPD advises that tests should have evidence of validity and reliability and should not be the sole basis for a hiring decision. [4, 5]

The same discipline protects candidates and employers. Rejecting someone because they seem “too traditional” can conceal assumptions about age, background or personality. In the UK, age is a protected characteristic in recruitment. Judge the evidence against the job, and monitor who your process screens out. [6, 7]

Build a bridge between engineering cultures

Hiring more broadly only works if the company has a plan for the transition. Put experienced spacecraft engineers alongside colleagues who understand the current product and production rhythm. Give them a defined onboarding path through the architecture, design rules, build flow, test regime and decision process. Set specific outcomes for the first 30, 60 and 90 days.

Knowledge transfer must run both ways. Experienced engineers can bring depth in reliability, qualification, failure analysis and managing complex interfaces. Engineers who have lived through rapid smallsat iterations can show how the team makes trades, learns from test data and keeps production moving. A knowledge management lead or technical trainer can capture recurring decisions, failure lessons and practical methods in useful playbooks, then turn them into short training and mentoring sessions. The engineers doing the work should help create and teach them.

That is how a company builds a repeatable capability instead of depending on a few people to carry it in their heads.

Stop waiting until the vacancy exists

The other part of this problem is pipeline. If a company expects to manufacture more spacecraft, expand AIT capacity or enter new markets in three to five years, it can map the skills it will need now: systems, RF, flight software, GNC, thermal, product assurance, manufacturing engineering and programme leadership. Which skills are scarce? Who can grow into the next level? Where is the company one departure away from losing critical knowledge?

Internships, apprenticeships, placements and graduate roles should be part of that answer. It would be inaccurate to say only primes offer them; sector-wide initiatives such as the US National Space Intern programme are already creating routes into space companies. But a growing venture that relies entirely on experienced external hires is leaving its own future workforce to someone else. [8]

Start small if necessary: one properly supervised intern on AIT or test automation, a graduate engineer rotating through systems and manufacturing, or a university project tied to a real technical challenge. Give those people mentors and a credible path to return. An internship without engineering supervision is a branding exercise, not a succession plan.

The question leaders should ask

If a hiring manager says, “We only want New Space people,” I would ask three questions:

1. Which experiences and behaviours are genuinely essential from day one?

2. How will we assess those fairly in people from different employers and mission types?

3. What can we teach in the first six months if the underlying engineering capability is strong?

There will still be roles where direct constellation production or a specific spacecraft architecture is indispensable. For many others, the better answer is to widen the entry point and build the conversion capability inside the business.

Space programmes do not slip simply because a job advert was poorly written. But when several critical roles remain unfilled, knowledge sits with too few people and hiring begins only after a programme is funded, staffing can become a delivery risk. Delivery risk can, in turn, affect customer confidence and the case for future investment. That is a strategic workforce planning problem, not just a recruitment problem.

New Space needs speed. It also needs the depth of engineering experience to make speed sustainable. The companies that learn to bring those strengths together will have more options when everyone else is chasing the same CVs.

If your space business is scaling and finding that the same narrow hiring criteria keep producing the same shortage, let’s talk. I help space companies define the skills they really need, build fairer hiring processes and develop the talent function and workforce pipelines to deliver their next phase of growth.

Ian Stammers is Founder of Ian Stammers Talent Advisory Ltd and has spent more than 20 years recruiting and leading talent acquisition across the global space sector.

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