Author: Aiden Gorham

An RF engineer who has taken a system from an idea on paper all the way to flight is rare. Rare enough that we could put that person forward to three of our clients and expect three offers. That’s flight heritage. Many engineers have the experience, but it’s not clear from their resumes. And others are closer to it than they realize.

How does a hiring manager choose between two RF engineers with the same skill set at the offer stage? Often, it comes down to what they’ve built that’s in space right now.

What Is Flight Heritage?

Flight heritage means hardware or software has already flown in space and done its job. Engineers measure this on NASA’s Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale, which runs from 1, where the basic science has been observed, to 9, an “actual system flight proven through successful mission operations.” TRL 8 is one step short: qualified through testing, but not yet flown.

In hiring, flight heritage is shorthand for engineers who have taken their work from early design all the way to orbit. Hiring managers want to know what you owned and how far it got. That matters more to them than your job title or your employer.

Why Do Space Hiring Managers Care About Flight Heritage?

Once something launches, you can’t send an engineer up to fix it. Ground testing gets close, but some stresses can only be fully validated in orbit.

Engineers who have seen their work through to flight know which problems tend to surface just before launch, because they’ve lived through the late design changes and test failures themselves. Companies want that experience, and the engineers who have it rarely need to look for a new job. They’re usually in good roles at good companies, often with equity they’d be leaving behind.

Why Doesn’t a Big Name on Your Resume Prove It?

Hiring managers notice a big name on a resume. The important thing is what you built there, and whether any of it flew.

Some of our startup clients ask for engineers from SpaceX or another big name, partly because it reassures their investors. But large teams split the work into narrow pieces. You can spend years on one part of one subsystem, even in a senior role. 

Technical leads at bigger companies also aren’t always as hands-on as their startup counterparts, especially once they start managing people. A startup hiring its first engineers needs someone who can lead a technical area and build the product.

If you’re at a large company with stock still vesting, weigh a move to a startup on what you’d own there, as well as what you’d leave behind. 

How Do You Show Flight Heritage on Your Resume?

If you’ve done the work, make sure it’s visible on your resume. Here’s how:

Lead With What You Owned

Job titles vary so much between companies that they don’t mean much without context. When we search for RF engineers by title, we get telecom engineers too, so we search by what people have done. Hiring managers read your resume the same way. Under each role, start with the system or subsystem you were responsible for.

Show How Far It Got

Name the stages you took your work through, from design and build to test, integration, launch and operations. If it flew, say so, and say whether it’s still operating. If the program stopped before launch, say how far you got.

Say Whether You Led or Supported

Jules Haehn, a former principal technical recruiter at Vast, has some great resume advice for space engineers. He asks candidates: “Did you play a leading or supporting role in your projects?” Both are worth listing. Just make the difference clear, because a hiring manager will ask. Verbs like “owned” and “led” read differently from “supported” and “contributed to”.

Put a Number on It

Haehn says most of your bullet points should include a metric. In space, that could be how many test campaigns you ran, or how long your hardware has been operating in orbit. Compare these two lines: 

• “RF Engineer, satellite communications team”
• “Led the RF design for a communications payload from early design through testing and launch. It’s been operating in orbit for two years.”

The second one tells the hiring manager what they want to know before they ask.

Add a Portfolio

Keep your resume short. Haehn suggests a separate portfolio with one or two slides per project, covering the objectives, requirements, your contribution, the results and what you learned. It gives you room for detail that won’t fit on a resume.

Stay Inside Your NDA

A lot of space work is covered by export controls or non-disclosure agreements. You can usually describe your role and how far the work got without naming the customer or sharing technical detail. If you’re not sure, check with your current employer what you’re allowed to say.

Look Beyond Your Day Job

If your current role only covers a narrow slice of a system, look for other proof. Time on a small, fast-moving team, or something you built on your own time, is evidence you can own more than your job description. Haehn also recommends adding side projects to your portfolio.

What If Your Experience Stops Short of Flight?

Maybe your program was cancelled before launch, or you haven’t been on one long enough to see it fly. You’re still in the running for plenty of space roles.

In small talent pools, some hiring managers know that asking for an exact match will cost them candidates. They’ll look at engineers who cover most of what the role needs, especially when you can learn the missing skills on the job.

If you haven’t seen a system through to flight yet, lead with the furthest stage you reached: qualification testing, integration, or a program that got to TRL 8 before it stopped. Then look for a role where you’ll own a system all the way to launch. That’s more likely at a smaller company, where teams are lean and engineers cover more of the lifecycle. It’s also where a step up into a lead or principal role tends to come sooner.

Make Your Flight Heritage Easy to Find

Flight heritage is proof that something you worked on made it to orbit and did its job. A hiring manager won’t see that from your job title or a company name, so spell it out on your resume.

If you’re thinking about where that experience could take you next, take a look at the space roles we’re hiring for right now.

A founder tells you your 0.5% could be worth $5 million one day. Before you count on it, you need to know how much of that you’d actually keep, and what has to happen first.

If you’re interviewing at a space startup and want to understand the equity on offer, this blog is for you. In it, we cover how equity works and the questions to ask a founder before you sign on the dotted line. 

Startup offers often pair equity with a lower salary than you’d earn at a bigger company. If you’re still deciding whether that trade works for you, start with our guide to weighing startup equity against salary.

How Space Startup Equity Works: Vesting, Cliffs and Dilution

Most space startup offers include equity: a grant of shares or stock options, often described as a percentage of the company. That percentage is where the conversation starts. How much of it you actually get depends on the terms of the agreement. These are the ones to understand before you sign, using Index Ventures’ guide to employee equity as the reference point:

• Vesting: you don’t get all your shares on day one. You earn them over time, usually a period of four years. Most companies also set a one-year cliff, a waiting period before anything vests. If you leave before your first year is up, you walk away with nothing. Once you reach the one-year mark, a quarter of your shares vest at once, and the rest usually vest monthly after that.
• Exercise window: stock options give you the right to buy shares at a set price. If you leave, US companies usually give you 90 days to buy your vested options, in cash. You may owe tax before you can sell anything. Carta found that by late 2024, employees were buying only about a third of their vested “in the money” options (ones worth more than the price to buy them). Cost is a big reason. Buying your options can mean dipping into your savings.
• Dilution: each funding round creates new shares, so your percentage shrinks. In Index’s example, 1% at seed becomes about 0.4% by Series D, though the stake can still be worth more in dollars.
• Preferred shares: investors usually hold preferred shares, which the company pays out first when it sells. Employees hold common shares, so a low-price sale can leave little for you.

The size of the grant matters too. Index’s US benchmark puts the average seed-stage grant for a senior engineer at about 1% of the company, though its figures cover all sectors, so treat that as a rough guide. Say you’re offered 0.5% and the founder is aiming for a $1 billion exit. That’s $5 million on paper. If the company raises three more rounds and each one sells 20% of the company, your stake shrinks to about 0.26%, or around $2.6 million. Preferred shares get paid first, so the real figure could be lower. Tax on equity depends on your situation.

Early Stage vs. Late Stage: How Company Stage Changes Your Odds

A 1% stake at a seed-stage company is a very different prospect from 1% at a Series C company. At a well-funded late-stage company, equity works more like a bonus on a fair salary. At seed, equity is the startup’s way of asking you to stay for the long haul. It only pays off if the company survives several more funding rounds.

Picture two job offers. One is from a Series C space company that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and plans to go public in the next few years. Shares there are more likely to pay out, and sooner. The other is from a Series A company that has just raised its first big round and may be several years away from any payout. Those shares could end up worth far more, or nothing at all.

Early-stage companies are also the ones most likely to close down. In 2024, 966 US startups on Carta’s platform shut down, up from 769 the year before, and SimpleClosure found that 74% of shutdowns since 2023 were at pre-seed or seed. 

Firefly Aerospace is an example of a startup that did make it big. When it went public on Nasdaq in August 2025, employees holding stock could finally sell it, once the usual lock-up period after an IPO had passed.

Questions to Ask a Space Startup Founder Before You Sign

Now put what you know about equity to use in your interviews. A recruiter can tell you a lot about the role, but only the founder can tell you what your shares could be worth and how likely they are to pay out. A founder who’s confident in the business should be happy to answer questions like these:

• When do my shares start to vest, and is there a cliff?
• What percentage of the fully diluted company is this? That means counting every share and option, including ones set aside for future hires.
• If the company sold, how much would investors get paid before employees?
• How long would I have to buy my options if I left?
• What are my shares worth in your best case, your expected case and your worst case?
• How many months of runway do you have, and is this role paid for by a customer contract or by the next round?
• Have any employees been able to sell shares yet?

If a founder can’t answer these clearly, take note. One candidate we’ve worked with came to us after they relocated for an early-stage company that folded only months later. Our guide to how to tell if a space startup is a safe move covers the other signs to check before you sign.

Space Startup Equity: Ask for the Numbers First

A big percentage and a big IPO target sound great in a pitch. But don’t forget that what you keep depends on the terms of the grant and on whether the company even gets there. 

Before you weigh the shares, make sure the salary can support you and anyone who relies on you. Our guide to weighing startup equity against salary shows you how to work that out. And if you’re thinking about your next move, take a look at the space roles we’re hiring for right now.

This blog is general information, not financial or tax advice. Everyone’s situation is different, so talk to a qualified financial advisor before you make decisions about equity.

Candidates weighing an offer from an early-stage space company instinctively check the funding before they sign. But funding alone doesn’t tell you whether a space startup is a good move. Plenty of well-funded space startups still haven’t made it, and the engineers who signed with them have had to start over.

Nearly half the companies we hired for in the last year were seed or Series A startups. More candidates are getting that early-stage call, and with so many new startups in the space economy, they’re asking whether it’s safe to sign on the dotted line.

CB Insights tracked 431 venture-backed companies that shut down since 2023. The companies in that group had raised an average of $11 million each. Of those companies, 70% folded when the money ran out. But CB Insights also found that running out of cash was rarely the real cause. Poor product-market fit and unsustainable unit economics are what dry up the capital in the first place. 

Virgin Orbit raised $228 million going public in 2021. It lost nine satellites in a failed launch in January 2023 and filed for bankruptcy three months later. The money ran out because the mission failed. After the launch, investors lost confidence and stopped funding the company.

Some of the examples below come from bigger companies, because their moves are public. The same signs show up at a 20-person startup, just on a smaller scale. 

Look Past a Space Startup’s Funding Round

A funding round tells you a company has money. That’s important for candidates deciding whether to join an early-stage startup in space. Over the last year, 78% of the roles we filled needed people on site at least some of the time, and 28% of the people we placed relocated for the job. If you move for a startup and it folds, you lose more than the job. 

But instead of asking how much money a company has, ask, “What’s changed since your last raise?” A raise shows that investors believe in the company’s plan. What’s changed since then shows whether the company is executing the plan. These four signs tell you whether a space startup is a safe bet, and you can check all of them yourself before you sign.

A Contract With a Deadline Beats Being Eligible to Bid

Ask your interviewer directly: is this role paid for by a customer contract or by the next funding round? Either answer can be fine. Plenty of solid space companies are running on investor money right now. But asking the question helps you understand the risk you’re taking on.

What a Named Deadline Means

Joining a contract vehicle (a pre-approved list of companies a customer like NASA can buy from) is a real milestone. It means a company has cleared NASA’s bar and is positioned to compete for missions. A specific deliverable with a deadline attached is simply the next stage along that same path: the work has been assigned and a paying customer is waiting.

NASA added Relativity’s Terran R to its Launch Services II contract in September, making it eligible for NASA missions ordered through mid-2030. That’s a strong signal in its own right; NASA doesn’t add companies it doesn’t take seriously.

Lunar Outpost is further along that same journey. NASA gave it $220 million in May 2026 to build Pegasus, its crewed lunar rover, due on the Moon by 2028. Both are good signs for a candidate. They just tell you slightly different things: one that NASA sees a company as a credible future partner, the other that the work and the deadline are already locked in. 

Investor Money vs. Customer Money

It’s important to know who’s paying for your role, because that tells you how secure the job is. Investors aren’t paying for a specific product. They’re putting money in because they think the company will be worth more later, and they want a piece of the pie when that happens. A contract means a paying customer. A customer like NASA is putting money behind a product it needs built.

If your role sits on a contract, a paying customer is waiting for the work. If it’s investor money alone, you’re building toward something the company is still hoping will pay off. Should that money run out before the company lands a customer, your job goes with it.

Companies Don’t Sign a Lease on a Maybe

Ask directly: is the space you’d be working in already under lease, or is the company still deciding where to put it? A company still figuring out its location isn’t necessarily a red flag. But a company with a signed lease is a safer bet.

What a Signed Lease Proves

Funding doesn’t come with a building attached. If you’re relocating for a role, check whether the company has signed a lease. The company has to pay rent and buildout costs whether it fills the building or not, so backing out gets expensive.

Cowboy Space leased 291,000 square feet in Kent, Washington, this year to build rockets and satellites in a former Costco distribution center. The company expects the site to bring roughly 300 new jobs to the region. That’s not the kind of space a company signs for a plan that might change.

An Executive Hire Comes With a Mandate

Before you sign, look up who’s joined the company’s leadership team recently and what the company hired them to do.

A company’s leadership tells you what’s coming next for the team you’d be joining. Nobody hires a CFO to formalize capital strategy for a team they want to cut.

Axiom Space brought on a new CFO and CIO this year, alongside a $525 million raise and international expansion into Japan and Switzerland. Its new CFO, Zach Gitomer, said the company needed “financial infrastructure, discipline, and capital strategy” for what it’s building next.

At a seed-stage space startup, you won’t see a new CFO. Look for the first senior hire outside engineering, like a head of operations or business development. It usually means the company is getting ready to grow.

Other Engineers Are Already Joining the Startup

Engineers talk to each other, and they often know which companies are worth joining before anyone else does. Payload found that more than twice as many people have moved from SpaceX to Blue Origin as the other way around. 

Check who’s already on the team and where they worked before. If people with good options chose this company, that’s a good sign. At a startup, the team is small enough to check in an afternoon. If early engineers left solid jobs at larger companies to join, they took a bigger risk than you’re being asked to take. 

Know What You’re Signing Up For at a Space Startup

Funding tells you a company can pay you for now. What you really need to know is whether the company behind the offer has a customer waiting on work, a building it’s committed to, leaders brought in to grow it, and engineers choosing to join. You can check most of this before you sign. If you’re thinking about your next move, take a look at the space roles we’re hiring for right now.