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Author: Jones

Why Founders Hiring Rare Space Talent Should Care About Time-to-Fill 

Posted on by Jones

You didn’t start a space company to become an expert in recruitment metrics. But there’s one number worth understanding: time-to-fill, the number of days between opening a role and getting someone signed.

If you’re building a propulsion system or racing toward a launch date, you need guidance, navigation, and controls engineers, plus satellite RF specialists. So does every other well-funded company doing the same thing. The list of people who have built a flight-proven guidance system or shipped a satellite RF payload is short. Everyone’s calling the same names.

That’s why time-to-fill matters more in space than almost anywhere else. The engineers you need aren’t waiting around for you to make up your mind. Nail your sign-off process, and your time-to-fill goes down while your signed offers go up. Get it wrong, and you’re watching a competitor build the team you wanted. 

Why Time-to-Fill Matters in Space Recruitment

A slow process costs more in some markets than others. In a client-driven market, it’s a nuisance. In a candidate-driven one, it means losing a great candidate to a competitor who has their sign-off process sorted. And space is about as candidate-driven as it gets. 

A 2025 Aerospace Industries Association report, conducted with McKinsey & Co., found industry attrition running near 16% between 2021 and 2024, more than 10 percentage points higher than any other industry. Candidates are calling the shots at the offer stage. That’s why it’s worth checking a recruiter’s track record in the sector before choosing to work with them.

Time-to-Fill and Retention: Why Speed Alone Isn’t the Goal

In space recruitment, speed isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s what keeps the candidate on the table. A cleared, flight-experienced GNC engineer might be one of a handful available in the entire country. And they might be interviewing at two competitors who closed funding the same quarter. But speed alone isn’t enough. You could lose the candidate to a competitor who moved faster on the offer if you don’t have your internal processes sorted. A fast hire who doesn’t stick isn’t actually fast. You may be back to square one if you don’t balance speed with quality.

One of our recruiters has seen this play out firsthand. He helped build an engineering team that went from a couple of people to around forty-five over about three years. In that stretch, they lost exactly one person, and that was to a move abroad, not a competing offer. It’s also the kind of result worth asking any recruiter to show you.  

It comes down to a deliberate process based on a winning recruiter-client partnership. The thing that will help you get your time-to-fill down without wasting time later is process. 

What you don’t want is a rushed process where a job gets filled based on whoever is available fastest. A deliberate one makes sure you find someone who actually fits. And once you understand why cultural fit matters in hiring, it’s clear that fit is what keeps people around.

Bringing Your Time-to-Fill Down is a Team Sport 

A good recruitment partner knows how to run a process that will get your time-to-fill down. But bringing down your time-to-fill isn’t only the recruiter’s job. A good way to think about it is a partnership where both parties agree on a process that will get their time-to-fill down. At EVONA, we call that the golden process. It’s built around SLAs we agree with a client upfront, tailored to whichever of our recruitment models fits the search. Stick to your half, and we commit to a timeline for filling the role. 

In our experience, there are 5 things that help to get your time-to-fill down, without sacrificing fit. Some of it relies on the client, and some of it relies on your recruitment partner. Knowing what a good process looks like will help you to recognise a recruitment partner that will help you get your time-to-fill down, sustainably. 

The 5 elements of a winning recruitment process

Where Client Input Makes the Difference 

The intake call

You can’t fill a role if you don’t know what you’re looking for. That’s why an intake call is non-negotiable before sourcing starts. A recruitment team that knows their stuff will always insist on this. Your job is to know what you want and to be available to talk through the job description. 

The best recruitment partners want to know these things before sourcing:

  • The non-negotiable skills versus what you can live without
  • The salary band
  • Who signs off on a CV
  • What “good” looks like beyond the job title

It sounds basic, but it’s the single biggest predictor of whether a search will go smoothly or go south halfway. When expectations aren’t clear from the get-go, everything downstream gets much harder and slower. 

A real-time channel: 

If speed matters, email is where searches go to stall. A recruitment team that takes speed seriously will insist on setting up a real-time channel before the first candidate is even sourced. All you need to do is stay reachable, whether you decide on Slack, Teams, or even a text thread. Agree on a default channel for anything time-sensitive. If email is your only channel, a strong candidate found on Tuesday is often gone by Friday, or already interviewing somewhere else.

A weekly check-in:

No news is not good news when it comes to recruitment. Founders don’t usually lose confidence in a recruiter because a search is hard. They lose confidence because they don’t know what’s going on.  A recruitment team worth keeping will get in touch every week without fail. All you need to do is show up for fifteen minutes a week. A check-in is not optional, because a client who feels informed is a client who trusts the process. And as we said before, a deliberate process is what will get your time-to-fill down.

What the Recruitment Partner Owns 

The last two are on your recruiter. The first is a sourcing checklist: a structured list covering intake notes, direct database search, targeted outreach, live postings, and site traffic. 

It exists because a search built from memory leans on whoever a recruiter already knows, and in a specialist space like this, that shortlist runs dry fast. 

A recruitment team that knows this market won’t let memory decide where a search starts. A good partner runs that checklist in full on every search, so the whole field gets covered instead of whatever channel is easiest.

Running a solid process is what makes a recruitment partner reliably fast. So before you choose a recruitment partner, ask how they handle these five things. If they can answer without hesitating, you’re in good hands. Your half is simple: show up, stay reachable, and give them fifteen minutes a week. 

Top 5 Moves in Space This Month: What September Means for Hiring

Posted on by Jones

Stoke Space raised $1 billion this month to build a second rocket before its first one has even flown. Four more space companies made moves just as telling this month. Here’s what happened, and what each one means for hiring.

1. Stoke Space Raised $1 Billion to Launch Its Reusable Nova Rocket

Stoke Space closed a $1 billion Series E this month to speed up its fully reusable Nova rocket, which the company wants to fly by 2027. The money also covers:

  • Building a second, much bigger vehicle, Nova Block 2, carrying roughly five times the payload of Nova’s reusable configuration, aimed at 2029
  • A sevenfold expansion of the Moses Lake, Washington, test site, from 75 to 550 acres
  • New payload processing facilities at Cape Canaveral to support both rockets at once

What It Means for Space

Nova is designed to recover both the booster and the upper stage, something no rocket has done operationally yet. Nova Block 2 is comparable to SpaceX’s Falcon 9, except that Falcon 9 isn’t fully reusable.

SpaceX’s own path to full reusability is Starship, aimed at a completely different scale of mission. SpaceX doesn’t expect to retire Falcon 9 until Starship is flying reliably several times a week. Stoke is betting it can bring full reusability to Falcon 9’s size class well before SpaceX has reason to build something similarly small and reusable.

Where the Jobs Are Headed

Stoke has around 400 people today and needs to scale fast. That means:

  • Growing propulsion, structures, avionics and GNC (guidance, navigation and control) engineering teams to run two rocket programs at once
  • Hiring the technicians needed to operate Moses Lake at seven times its current size

It also puts Stoke in direct competition with Rocket Lab, Firefly and Relativity for the same small pool of people who’ve actually worked on a reusable launch vehicle before. Nobody has built one that’s fully reusable yet, so that pool of people barely exists. If that’s you, expect more calls.

2. SpaceX Posted Its First Job Listing for a Launch Site That Doesn’t Exist Yet

SpaceX put up its first job posting for a proposed launch site in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana. The state expects the project to bring more than $100 billion in investment, about 3,000 direct jobs over ten years, and 8,100 additional indirect jobs for contractors and vendors. Construction starts by the end of 2027, with SpaceX targeting first launches for 2029.

What It Means for Space

Vermilion Parish itself has no existing space workforce. What the parish does have is the Gulf Coast’s existing heavy industry: shipbuilders like Conrad Shipyard, oil and gas majors such as Chevron, and the logistics hub at Port Fourchon, all of which produce welders, pipefitters, electricians and heavy-equipment operators used to working on large, hazardous industrial sites.

Where the Jobs Are Headed

Most of these roles have to be filled now. Site design, environmental permitting and range-safety planning all have to be finished before a rocket ever reaches the pad. That leaves SpaceX with two problems to solve:

  • SpaceX has to recruit specialist roles (GNC, propulsion, launch and pad operations leadership) nationally, competing with Blue Origin and every other space company for people willing to relocate to a parish that’s never had a space employer
  • For site trades (welders, electricians, pipefitters and riggers), SpaceX will be competing with Louisiana’s oil, gas and shipbuilding industry for people with transferable skills

3. Rocket Lab Fully Funded Its $8 Billion Iridium Acquisition

Rocket Lab closed out the financing behind its $8 billion acquisition of Iridium this month, completing a $1.94 billion stock offering to get there. The deal hands Rocket Lab a global satellite network with more than 2.55 million subscribers, plus government, defense and commercial customers already paying for it. It also comes with the spectrum and infrastructure to run that network.

What It Means for Space

Most launch companies stick to launch. Rocket Lab has spent years buying its way into building spacecraft too, and Iridium adds something bigger: an already-profitable network. Iridium made $871.7 million in revenue last year at a 57% operating margin.

Instead of aiming to make cheaper rockets, Rocket Lab is diversifying by looking at what happens after launch. That means running the satellites, selling the communications services they provide, and collecting revenue from customers long after the rocket’s gone.

Where the Jobs Are Headed

Rocket Lab isn’t just buying satellites; it’s buying an operating business it has never run before. That means:

  • Program and integration management roles to fold two companies into one without impacting a network 2.55 million subscribers are relying on
  • Satellite operations and GNC hires to run the combined business at a scale Rocket Lab didn’t need before

4. NASA Gave Relativity Space a Contract That Doesn’t Start Until 2030

NASA added Relativity Space’s Terran R to its Launch Services II contract this month, making it eligible for NASA missions assigned between now and 2030, for launches that have to happen by 2032.

The catch: Terran R hasn’t flown yet. Relativity is still building its launch pad at Cape Canaveral and a new engine test site at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.

What It Means for Space

Four years sounds like plenty of runway, but proving a new rocket reliable enough for NASA missions could eat up most of it. Relativity has to get Terran R flying, then flying repeatedly, well before the contract starts sending business its way.

Where the Jobs Are Headed

That means Relativity needs to build out propulsion, structures, avionics and launch operations teams now, years ahead of the first paying mission.

It also puts Relativity in the same hiring pool as Blue Origin, ULA, Firefly and Stoke: all racing to build a similar class of rocket, all drawing from the same small group of people who have already done it.

5. York Space Systems Landed Another Constellation Contract

York Space Systems, based in Denver, was named prime contractor for Tomorrow.io’s new weather constellation this month. The deal is worth $187 million to start, covering dozens of satellites carrying weather sensors. As prime, York owns the entire program. It’s building the satellites, integrating partners’ sensors and answering for the whole constellation itself.

What It Means for Space

That kind of ownership means York carries all the risk too. If a sensor doesn’t work or the ground systems fail, that’s York’s problem to fix. Responsibility like that needs serious production capacity, which is why York has already put over $755 million into its factory.

Where the Jobs Are Headed

This also means York needs to grow its in-house teams: the engineers who build the satellites, the ones who handle how they communicate, and the ones who run them once they’re in orbit.

That puts York up against other satellite builders like Terran Orbital, Blue Canyon and Millennium Space, who are all hiring the same kind of people. It’s another sign that satellite-building jobs keep growing in Denver.

What These Five Moves Signal

These five moves show that hiring starts years before the mission goes live. Without a talent pipeline, there is no mission. Talk to us for advice on where to start.

The Future of Space Depends on Today’s Junior Talent, and Hiring Managers Will Decide It

Posted on by Jones

Space companies are hiring hand to mouth: filling this year’s seats with people who already know the work. In the space industry, the talent pool of experienced engineers is finite. If hiring managers in the space industry keep passing the buck on investing in younger talent, the pipeline will eventually dry up. 

At the moment, senior talent dominates the space arena, and a lot of that talent will retire out of the workforce over the next decade. Our own data confirms it. 

What Our Interview Data Shows

Of our placements in Q2, 49% were for senior, principal or staff roles, 23% for lead or manager roles, 19% for director, VP or C-suite roles, and just 9% for junior, associate or technician roles. 

That means almost everyone else our clients hired had already done the job before, somewhere else. The rare exceptions are people companies decided, for once, to take a chance on. Actively attracting and mentoring junior talent is particularly important for startups in this industry. But only a next generation of experienced, ready-to-step-in people will fill those gaps.

Why Space Companies Want Experience Over Potential 

At EVONA, we understand why space companies, particularly startups, prefer experienced talent. Space is pulling in more investment than it used to, particularly since SpaceX proved the commercial model works.

More capital means more competition to get a product to market, and investors want to see their money go toward people who can deliver immediately. That pressure helps explain what we’re seeing in our own numbers: even when a role is posted as junior, it often goes to someone who’s already done adjacent work, because a proven candidate is the safer bet when a hire has to justify itself to a board next quarter. 

What “Junior” Really Means on a Space Job Description 

Often, the job title on the JD says “junior” but the requirements don’t. A junior posting that asks for 2 to 3 years of space-specific experience isn’t really a junior posting. It’s a mid-level posting with a discount attached, and it locks out the exact people junior roles are meant to bring in.

This is the tension we keep running into with clients. Everyone wants a junior candidate, but nobody wants to spend the time training one. 

Why Flight Heritage Makes Space Hiring Different 

Space hiring is different from almost every other technical industry here, for four reasons. 

What Flight Heritage Actually Requires

A self-taught software developer can build something real on their own time and use it to prove they can do the job. In space, that doesn’t exist. What space companies actually want is flight heritage: proof someone has worked on hardware that’s flown. You cannot get that without a company deciding, first, to let you near it. There’s no side project that substitutes for it. 

Very Few Companies Can Give Someone Their First Shot

The number of companies that can plausibly give someone that first shot is small to begin with. In most industries, if one employer won’t train you, a dozen others in adjacent industries might. In space, the list of companies with the budget, the programs, and the appetite to take a chance on someone unproven is short. If none of them will do it, there’s nowhere else to go get that experience instead. 

Long Program Timelines Mean Fewer Reps per Career

Program timelines make it worse again. A single spacecraft program can run for years. An engineer might see two or three complete programs across an entire career, from requirements through operations. Compare that to industries where people ship and iterate every week and build a decade of judgment in two years. In space, each junior hire is a slower, bigger bet, which is why companies avoid it.

Clearance Requirements Narrow the Pool Again

Clearance requirements narrow that pool of willing companies even further.  A meaningful share of space roles require security clearance, which rules out training candidates from the outside even when a company might otherwise be willing.

Put those four things together, and an aging space workforce becomes a question of national capability: whether the country doing this work will have anyone qualified to do it in twenty years. That skills gap already exists. It only gets wider if the industry keeps undervaluing junior talent.

Fresh Grads Are a Real Advantage for Startups

More Hands, Fewer Dollars

Junior engineers cost less, which matters more at a startup compared to the primes. A team that can only afford two senior hires can often afford five junior ones instead, freeing up senior engineers’ time from the testing, documentation and integration work that doesn’t need their judgment.

Fresh grads also arrive with current knowledge. Engineering degrees today lean hard into the software, modeling and data tools the space industry is short on, so a new graduate often walks in with the most up-to-date industry knowledge. 

An Investment in Your Future Talent Pipeline

There’s a longer payoff too. A startup that trains its own junior engineers isn’t just filling jobs reactively. It’s also building the mid-career skills it’ll need in five years, instead of fighting every other company for the same shrinking pool of experienced hires. 

The Culture Fit Benefit

Someone coming from a prime is used to programs that run for years and decisions that go through several rounds of sign-off. That’s a different rhythm from a startup, where a small team needs to move fast and make calls without waiting for a formal review or sign-off from several layers of management. A junior engineer with no prior experience can often slot into a startup’s pace more easily from day one. 

What Founders Can Do to Shape the Future of Space

“Space is for everyone, yet many people see it as an area that needs a special degree.”

Tom Kelly, Co-Founder at EVONA

Apprenticeships come closest to solving the flight-heritage problem, because employers build them to do exactly that: paid, employer-embedded training that doesn’t require someone to already have the experience they’re there to build.

Two US Programs Are Already Closing the Gap 

Apprenti runs registered aerospace and space apprenticeships in the US built to counter this exact shortage, pairing new hires with mentors and structured, hands-on training instead of asking them to arrive already proven.

The Arizona Space Grant Consortium runs a smaller, more targeted version of the same idea. Its NASA-funded internship program places undergraduates with small to mid-sized space companies for a semester, paid, working around 10 hours a week on real project work tied to their field of study. 

Startups doing things like lunar resource mining, small modular reactors and high-altitude balloon platforms make up almost the entire current lineup. That’s exactly the kind of company we’ve been talking about. It’s not a full graduate scheme, but it proves the model scales down. A startup doesn’t need a huge budget to give a junior engineer their first real project. Given how rarely we’re running junior interviews right now, building even a handful of structured paths like these into a hiring plan isn’t a nice extra. It’s close to the minimum effort required. 

That conviction goes back to EVONA’s earliest days: bring in junior talent from a range of backgrounds, not just people who already have a specialized space pedigree. A strong team isn’t built by hiring every senior name that’s already worked at SpaceX. It’s built by finding people who fit the company’s values, then creating a real path for them to grow into the work. 

Talk to Us About Your Junior Hiring Strategy

If your team is trying to work out where junior talent actually fits into your hiring plan, that’s a conversation EVONA has with space companies every week. Get in touch, and we’ll walk through what a realistic junior intake looks like for your team, budget, and timeline.

The Senior Space Engineer You Need Doesn’t Have the Title Yet 

Posted on by Jones

The primes have a promotion problem, and it’s about to become your hiring advantage. In space, experience is hard to come by, but ability is everywhere. Plenty of engineers can already do the job. It’s just that their resume doesn’t say so yet. The answer to that gap: the step-up hire. 

What Is a Step-Up Hire? 

You’ve got a spot for a senior engineer. And somewhere inside a bigger company, with fewer opportunities, the engineer you need has been ready for a while. They’re the ones junior engineers go to for advice before anyone else. They’re doing jobs no one assigned to them, like running the subsystem review, or catching a design flaw before it ever reaches a senior engineer’s desk. The step-up hire is the person you might overlook for a role because “senior” is not in their job title yet. That’s the person you need to hire. 

There Aren’t Enough Engineers to Begin With 

There aren’t enough engineers in this industry to begin with, let alone senior engineers who’ve seen a program from requirements through operations. That’s only one of the reasons that 95% of space companies report skills-related recruitment or retention challenges.

The average recruitment cycle takes about 10 weeks. That’s 10 weeks of work lost to recruitment. The skills shortage shows up the most in propulsion, avionics, and flight software, the disciplines with the fewest people who’ve carried a full program end to end.

Why Engineers Are Leaving for Commercial Tech

And turnover isn’t helping either. The engineers don’t always leave because they’re frustrated where they are. The space industry is also competing for talent with the commercial tech industry for aerospace-trained engineers by offering them more money and faster progression.

The Primes’ Promotion Ceiling is Your Opportunity

Finding and retaining engineers for the space industry is about knowing what makes them tick. Progression is one thing most engineers are looking for at a certain point. Larger companies, especially the primes, can’t always offer engineers their next step once they’re ready. A team of five or six engineers might only have room for one of them to move up. That means most of these engineers will have to either stay put and try again next year or think of moving elsewhere. 

A Senior at a Prime Isn’t a Senior at a Startup 

In our experience, a senior at a prime is not the same as a senior at a startup. Primes and startups both have their own challenges and advantages, and no company is perfect. It just depends on what you’re looking for as an engineer. 

Primes offer higher salaries and the career stability that startups can’t always promise. But there’s often a lot of red tape to deal with, and progression can be slow. A startup can offer a role that often doesn’t exist for engineers working inside a prime: hands-on technical leadership from day one, and a promotion timeline tied to how fast the company grows instead of how many seats are free in the org chart.

Management Track VS Staying Technical

Most engineers want responsibility and accountability. For ambitious engineers who love the tech, frustrations could start to build at the primes. 

People management and staying technical are two different paths when it comes to larger space companies. At a prime, leading a team often means signing off on someone else’s test plan, instead of running the test bench yourself. 

The Job Description Trap to Avoid

At EVONA, we often see founders responding to a difficult talent market by adding more things to the job description. The logic is something like “If the skills are hard to find, let me try to get more skills in one person”. Instead of helping, this costs you candidates.

The people who could fill your jobs are out there. They just might be waiting for their big break at a larger space company. This looks like standard engineers ready for senior, seniors ready for principal or lead.

How to Hire a Step-Up Candidate in Space Engineering

You might not be able to offer a prime salary but you can offer engineers something they won’t get at the primes: faster growth, while staying close to the tech they love. The step up is the offer.

The best way to approach this is to write the job description one level below where you’d naturally aim, and say so in the posting. In practice, that can mean rewriting the posting itself: describe the role as one for someone ready to become a Senior Systems Engineer, with the day-one expectations spelled out for the first two quarters.

Sell the Ownership

Your job description is your pitch to the engineers you’re interviewing. Instead of focusing on years of experience in the job, tell a candidate exactly what they’ll own in the first six months. Lead with the scope of the role, and not just the compensation, because ownership is the thing they won’t get by staying where they are. 

Most founders already know they can’t outbid a prime on salary, but an offer isn’t only about money and the trimmings. It’s also about the opportunity to grow and the exposure to helping build a company – and the tech – from the ground up. 

Don’t Forget to Screen for Culture

Screen for the transition instead of the years. Look for fast-paced or chaotic project work, side projects that show real interest in the industry, and evidence someone can operate without a structure telling them what to do next. Ten years at one company only matters if the instincts for a startup aren’t there too.

That step up works best with support around it. Pair the promotion with someone who’s done the role before, even if that’s a fractional advisor or a former colleague brought in for a few hours a month. The jump is real. It doesn’t have to be solo.

Every recruiter working the space market right now sees the same thing: strong candidates are getting multiple offers within days, not weeks. The founders who move first on the step-up pitch are the ones filling roles while everyone else is still waiting for a résumé that was never going to show up. The step-up candidates are already out there, waiting on a job description that actually speaks to them. See what EVONA can find for you.

How Space Startups Should Hire at Every Stage: From Seed to IPO 

Posted on by Jones

If you want to grow a successful space startup, you need to hire like you mean it. Who you hire, and how, will determine your success. The space companies that make it from seed to IPO change tactics at every stage based on the challenge before them.

Every stage tests something different. Seed asks if you can build the thing at all. Series A asks if what you built has legs to scale. Finally, Series B asks if you can grow faster than everyone else on the same mission. Hiring for the stage you’re at builds proof. Are you hiring for proof, or hiring to fill a gap? 

Is Your Hiring Model Changing With You?

We’ve worked with clients from their first seed round through to a public listing. No two companies followed the same path, but all of them kept adapting their hiring to whatever problem the stage brought.

A pre-seed founder and a Series C founder are solving the same underlying problem. They need the right people for the job, but under very different constraints. One is protecting eighteen to twenty-four months of cash. The other is banking on a board’s confidence in how fast they can execute.

Sticking to the same hiring plan at every stage could lead to either spending money you don’t have early on, or moving too slowly once the company is scaling. Space companies looking to scale fast need to rethink their hiring approach every few months by asking themselves: “Does the model match the moment?”

Pre-Seed and Seed: Fractional Leadership Without the Commitment

At seed stage, few companies can justify a full-time CFO, COO, or Head of Ops, even though they can’t do without the expertise. This is where fractional leadership saves the day. That means a part-time CFO who’s raised capital before, or a fractional COO who’s already dealt with the kind of problem most first-time space founders haven’t: export control. 

Many space startups only discover their ITAR obligations once they try to hire a foreign national engineer, and the penalties for getting it wrong run up to $1 million per violation. With fractional hires, you’ll get experienced judgment for a few hours a week instead of a full salary.

We see founders bring in fractional operators with a plan to convert them to a full-time hire once they can justify it. It’s also why we built Fraction, our platform connecting founders with fractional executives across deep tech, defense, and space, so you can find the right senior expertise regardless of who happens to be in your network.

Fresh Off the Round: Spend Investor Money Wisely

The weeks after you close a round are when the math matters most. Hire someone permanent before you’re sure you need them, and you’re spending your investor’s money on a guess. Space hardware roles are especially expensive guesses: a senior propulsion or avionics hire can cost $200,000 to $300,000 once you include salary, benefits, and overhead.

This is where contract hiring can help. We’re seeing more founders bring in a contractor first. We’ll handle the payroll, so you don’t have to commit to a huge cost yet. It buys the company time to find out if the role really makes sense. If it does, the contract then converts to a permanent hire. 

Series A to B: Hiring for Good vs. Staying Flexible 

As you move through Series A and into B, the test is about whether you can scale what you built, reliably. As you start scaling, it becomes clear which roles you can’t live without. Those roles are worth hiring for directly, through a focused, headhunter-led search. But that doesn’t solve the volume problem you’ll be sitting with at this point. 

With multiple open roles at once, even a strong internal recruiter runs out of hours in the day. In space, that volume problem usually comes off the back of a big government contract win. SpaceX alone has picked up more than $7 billion in Pentagon contracts this year. 

On a startup’s scale, landing even one contract can turn a handful of open roles into a full team almost overnight. That’s why we embed directly into your team, working as part of your in-house hiring effort. That means your hiring capacity grows with demand, saving the cost of a permanent hiring team.

Series C and Beyond: When Diligence Matters More Than Speed

By the time you’re closing later rounds or approaching IPO, the hires that matter most are senior, and getting one wrong costs more than a missed engineering deadline. This year’s SpaceX IPO, the largest in history, is already pulling a new wave of space companies toward the same milestone. 

The test isn’t about growth anymore. It’s whether your leadership can hold up under scrutiny. A bad C-suite hire costs a board’s confidence and months of momentum you don’t get back. This is where Executive Search comes in: partner-led searches based on deep research, and built to get the decision right the first time.

The Takeaway

None of these approaches should be used without considering where you’re at. The hiring model needs to match the moment you’re in. If you’re not sure where your own hiring maturity sits right now, that’s exactly the kind of conversation we have with founders every week. Get in touch and we’ll help you figure it out.

What Is Asteroid Mining and Who Could Work in It?

Posted on by Jones

Most people picture launch pads and mission control when they hear “careers in space exploration.” But a new corner of the sector is hiring, and it has more to do with rocks than rockets.

Asteroid mining is moving from concept to early-stage execution. The roles it creates go far beyond traditional aerospace engineering. EVONA connects talent with companies building toward off-world resource extraction, and this article maps the specific careers, skills, and entry points the field is opening up.

A Quick Rundown of Asteroid Mining

  • Asteroid mining targets valuable resources like platinum-group metals and water ice from near-Earth asteroids for commercial and exploration use.
  • Roles span engineering, planetary science, robotics, law, business development, and manufacturing operations.
  • Companies like AstroForge and TransAstra are already flying missions and building out teams, making this a live hiring market rather than a future one.
  • You do not need a traditional aerospace background to enter this field, as transferable skills from mining, software, and materials science apply directly.
  • Early-stage companies are already hiring for mechanical, laser systems, and materials science positions tied to asteroid prospecting missions.

What Is Asteroid Mining?

Asteroid mining is the process of identifying, reaching, and extracting valuable materials from asteroids orbiting the sun. These small rocky and metallic bodies contain high concentrations of platinum-group metals, rare earth elements, water ice, and iron-nickel alloys.

The concept has moved beyond theory. AstroForge, a California-based startup, launched its Odin mission in 2025, its first attempt at flying by a near-Earth asteroid to check whether it held platinum-group metals. The mission represents one of the first private attempts to validate off-world resource extraction. 

Why Is Asteroid Mining Gaining Attention Now?

Two shifts are driving interest. First, Earth’s reserves of critical minerals like platinum, cobalt, and rare earths face growing supply pressure from electric vehicle production, renewable energy, and semiconductor manufacturing. Asteroids offer a supply source that sidesteps geopolitical bottlenecks.

Second, reusable launch vehicles have dropped the cost of reaching orbit. What once required a government-sized budget now sits closer to startup territory. That cost reduction makes commercial asteroid prospecting missions financially plausible for the first time.

Investment and Hiring Are Picking Up 

AstroForge has raised over $50 million in venture capital to pursue its extraction technology, while TransAstra’s funding is more modest and largely government-backed. TransAstra’s  current business is space tugs and orbital debris removal, with asteroid mining still on the horizon. As these firms mature, they’ll need to build teams across multiple disciplines.

Other companies are on the same growth path. Karman+, a Dutch asteroid mining startup, raised $20 million in seed funding in 2025 to build its first spacecraft. The company also relocated its headquarters to Denver, beating out competing bids from the UK and Luxembourg. Karman+ joins a cluster of big names in Denver that includes Lockheed Martin, Sierra Space, and United Launch Alliance. Colorado approved close to $1.3 million in tax credits to land the deal. The move is expected to create 150 new jobs over seven years, with average salaries above $110,000, in roles spanning data engineering, market analysis, and mission operations. 

But It’s Not Without Risks

It’s worth remembering this isn’t the sector’s first run. A decade ago, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries were the names to watch. Both were acquired and abandoned mining altogether by 2019. Early-stage space companies pivot fast, and anyone building a career here should be ready to pivot with them. 

What Types of Engineering Roles Does Asteroid Mining Create?

The engineering demands here are different from typical satellite or launch vehicle programs. You’re designing systems that must operate autonomously in microgravity, millions of kilometers from the nearest repair crew.

Mechanical Engineers

Mechanical engineers work on drilling systems, regolith collection mechanisms, and structural designs for spacecraft that can dock with irregularly shaped asteroids. Laser systems engineers develop ablation and cutting technologies for extracting material from asteroid surfaces.

Robotics Engineers

Robotics engineers build the autonomous machines that carry out extraction without human presence. These systems need to navigate unpredictable terrain, handle material in zero gravity, and operate reliably for months or years without intervention. 

What Science and Research Roles Are Involved?

Planetary geologists and materials scientists play a critical role in asteroid mining. They classify asteroid types (C-type for volatiles, S-type for silicates, M-type for metals) and assess which targets hold commercially viable concentrations of specific minerals.

Materials Scientists

Materials scientists develop processing techniques for refining raw asteroid material in space. In our experience across 300+ space companies, these cross-disciplinary roles are among the hardest to fill because they require deep domain knowledge and an appetite for working on technology that doesn’t have a proven playbook yet.

Remote Sensing Specialists

Remote sensing specialists use hyperspectral imaging and spectral analysis to map asteroid surfaces from orbit. Their data determines whether a target is worth the investment of a full extraction mission.

Are There Non-Engineering Careers in Asteroid Mining?

This is where assumptions miss the mark. The reality is that asteroid mining companies need far more than engineers. Space law is one of the fastest-growing adjacent fields, because the Outer Space Treaty doesn’t explicitly address private property rights on celestial bodies.

Commercial extraction raises legal questions that require dedicated expertise. Regulatory frameworks, resource ownership, and international compliance are all open territory.

Business development and commercial strategy roles are essential for companies navigating the path from prospecting to revenue. Someone needs to negotiate supply agreements, manage investor relations, and structure the financial models behind billion-dollar resource valuations.

Manufacturing operations managers, supply chain specialists, program managers, and quality assurance professionals round out the hiring picture. Across the companies we work with, there’s demand for a wide range of space jobs.

What Skills Transfer Into Space Mining Jobs?

If you’re working in terrestrial mining, you already have relevant experience. The fundamentals of resource extraction, geological surveying, and safety-critical operations translate directly. The adaptation involves learning how those processes function in microgravity and vacuum conditions.

Software engineers with experience in autonomous systems, computer vision, or AI-driven decision-making are in demand. Asteroid mining spacecraft must make navigation and extraction choices without real-time human input due to communication delays.

Data scientists who can model ore body distribution, predict yields from spectral data, and optimize mission trajectories bring immediate value. Get crystal clear on where your existing skills overlap with space mining requirements, and you’ll find the transition more accessible than you might expect.

How Can You Prepare for a Career in Asteroid Mining?

Start with the technical foundation. Degrees in aerospace engineering, mining engineering, robotics, planetary science, or materials science position you well. But the sector also hires from mechanical engineering, physics, software development, and geoscience backgrounds.

Build familiarity with in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) research. NASA’s educational resources on asteroid mining offer a solid introduction to the engineering and scientific challenges involved.

The practical step is to start engaging with the sector now. Apply to early-stage companies, follow mission announcements, and learn how different roles contribute to the extraction lifecycle.

Asteroid Mining Careers Are Closer Than You Think

Asteroid mining isn’t a far-future fantasy. Companies are flying prospecting missions today, and they need mechanical engineers, laser scientists, materials researchers, legal specialists, program managers, and commercial strategists to build out their teams.

Your background in mining, robotics, software, science, or business operations could be exactly what these companies need. The opportunity is broader than you might expect.

If you’ve got the skills and the drive to help build something that hasn’t been built before, asteroid mining is a sector worth watching closely. As specialists in staffing for the international space sector, we’ve placed more than 2,000 people across 300+ space companies. The EVONA jobs portal lists current openings, and our recruitment team matches your skills to roles at companies working on asteroid mining and related space resource programs.

FAQs About Asteroid Mining Careers 

What is asteroid mining and how does it work? 

Asteroid mining involves sending spacecraft to near-Earth asteroids to extract valuable materials like platinum-group metals, water ice, and rare earth elements. Autonomous robotic systems carry out the extraction in microgravity, and the mined materials can support both Earth-based industries and future space infrastructure.

What careers does asteroid mining create? 

Asteroid mining creates roles for mechanical engineers, robotics engineers, planetary geologists, materials scientists, space lawyers, program managers, and business development professionals.

Do you need an aerospace degree to work in asteroid mining? 

Not necessarily. Skills from terrestrial mining engineering, software development, data science, materials science, and manufacturing operations transfer directly.

Which companies are actively pursuing asteroid mining? 

AstroForge and TransAstra are two of the most active private companies. AstroForge attempted its first asteroid flyby with the Odin mission in 2025, and both firms are hiring for engineering, science, and operations roles. 

Space Founders Can Help Engineers Say Yes to an Offer (Here’s How)

Posted on by Jones

In space, retaining the skills you need often means a cross-country search. It also often means asking an engineer to relocate to bring your mission to life. Asking someone to relocate for a role is asking them to uproot their life, and their family too. That’s not a decision most people make on a recruiter’s word alone.

We’ve written to candidates directly about what they need to consider before relocating for a role. Founders can do a lot to help prospective candidates say yes to their offer. Here’s what you need to know about a relocation offer in space.

Is Relocation Really Necessary?

Because space talent is geographically clustered around the country, local talent often won’t cut it. Avionics and propulsion-test work has to be in person, so if you’re not based in Huntsville or the Golden Corridor, there’s no way around it. Even when talent is available locally, the market is competitive enough that you may still need to look elsewhere.

Remote work isn’t an option in space the way it is at software companies. More than 80% of the roles we place at EVONA require some sort of on-site presence, and for electrical engineers, that number climbs past 90%. By definition, roles that require clearance can’t be done remotely, and a lot of hardware work has to happen where the hardware is.

The engineers who will get you to Series B aren’t just choosing a job. They’re choosing a life. If they have a spouse, signing your offer may impact their partner’s career too. If they have kids, their schooling will be impacted. Making a hire like this means winning their family’s buy-in, and that’s where the founder’s role in a relocation offer comes in.

The Recruiter Closes, the Founder Seals the Deal

In space startups, the founder plays an important role in getting engineers to buy into their vision, especially when it may require them to move. The recruiter identifies and headhunts the talent, presents your story and vision, negotiates the numbers, and stress-tests whether the engineer is really ready to move. Once that’s done, the founder makes the mission real.

How We Support Engineers to Relocate

Before an offer goes out, our job is to make sure nothing about the move is unresolved, so engineers can make an informed, confident decision.

Even before the first interview, we start asking prospective hires the hard questions they may otherwise avoid. That way, founders have the best chance of the engineer they liked signing on the dotted line, and sticking around long after.

This also lowers the chances that a newly appointed hire will reconsider after a counteroffer. We’ve seen a candidate walk away after already relocating and starting on-site, only to have a former employer come back with a strong enough counteroffer to change their mind. Surfacing hesitations before an offer goes out is what prevents that.

One of the most important questions we ask is: “Has your partner agreed to the move?” That’s because being “open to a move” is not the same as seriously considering the real-life implications.

We test for it rather than take their word for it. That’s not because we don’t trust them, but because the more engineers can consider the cost to their livelihoods upfront, the better prepared they will be when an offer comes. Beyond checking whether their family is on board, we run through a series of logistical considerations, including schools, notice periods, and housing. We only send an offer letter once we’re confident the candidate has thought through everything.

Where the Founder Comes In

With so much at stake, a founder’s involvement in the interview process is often what seals the deal. The recruiter sells and presents the role, but a recruiter can’t credibly sell the company’s future, because they don’t own it. Only you can speak with real authority on where the company is headed, what the candidate would actually get to work on, and why the mission is worth the disruption to their life, and that conversation has a bigger impact on engineers than a pitch from a recruiter ever could.

We tell candidates considering an early-stage relocation to ask the founder directly about the runway. Having a real number ready is key. A vague answer here is one of the fastest ways to lose someone who’s weighing a real risk.

Support for the spouse’s side of the move matters here too, even something as simple as a warm introduction to a local team or pointing toward relocation resources. It shows the company sees this as a family decision, and candidates appreciate that.

What a Relocation Offer Accounts For

The Money

We also advise founders on how to make a relocation offer appealing. Because relocation touches most of the roles you’re hiring for, the costs are worth planning for before the first search even starts.

Check the offer number against the reality of the city your prospective hire is moving to. A cost-of-living calculator is a great tool for this. A salary that looks identical on paper can be a pay cut in a new city.

After calculating the cost-of-living gap, here’s what you should include to make a relocation offer worthwhile:

  • a cost-of-living adjustment
  • moving expenses
  • temporary housing
  • a house-hunting trip

This way, the number on the offer letter looks good in practice and not just on paper.

The Time

Moving a family takes time. It could involve anything from a spouse’s job search to selling a house. For relocation offers, founders need to factor a delayed start date into their runway.

We help by mapping the notice period, visa processing (if applicable), and moving logistics against the start date. Founders who are flexible about the start date have access to engineers worth the wait.

The Takeaway

A recruiter closes the candidate. But a candidate who relocates is likely choosing your company for years. And that decision will ultimately get made around a kitchen table, not in an interview room. The startups that successfully navigate relocation offers aren’t always the ones offering the biggest relocation package. They’re the ones where the founder gets in front of the candidate early, making an indisputable case for the mission.

Building a relocation offer for your next hire? EVONA’s recruiters have walked hundreds of space engineers through this exact decision, and we can help you get ahead of the questions that decide whether they say yes. Find more on hiring in space at EVONA Insights.

Does Your TA Team Have the Capacity for Scale?

Posted on by Jones

You didn’t build a space company for your lead engineer to sit in interviews all day. The obvious cost of a slow hiring process is the fee, the job board spend, the weeks on the calendar. The real cost is the opportunity cost: the person who should be building your proof of concept is sitting across a table instead. 

You need a specialist in space recruitment. Here’s why:

Specialists vs. Generalist Recruiters

Hiring for technical know-how in space is much harder than technical recruiting in other industries, and your TA team will feel it. The average space-sector role takes about 10 weeks to fill, per the UK Space Sector Skills Survey 2023. And it’s not getting any easier. Working with specialists dedicated to the space industry can bring that down. At Evona, we’ve brought that figure down to 6 weeks.

Internal teams are generalist by necessity because most early-stage companies can’t justify more than one or two internal recruiters. Their priority is whatever’s open that week: engineering today, finance next month, ops after that.

Compare that to a specialist desk in the space industry. They do one thing, all day: recruit for space. They’ve spent years building a pool of passive talent ready to pick up their call. A recruiter working across multiple disciplines doesn’t have the bandwidth to build deep networks. They work reactively instead, starting from scratch with every new role. That costs time, and by extension money, that space companies can’t afford to lose.

Technical Vocabulary

Judging how well someone understands propulsion systems or AIT work is the engineer’s job, not a recruiter’s. That’s true no matter who’s in charge of the search. A generalist recruiter running a propulsion search might not know what an AIT engineer does, or why satellite integration experience doesn’t mean someone can build a satellite from scratch.

And without the technical vocabulary to know a weaker candidate from a stronger one, your lead engineer spends more time in interviews than they need to. A recruiter who understands space has the language to translate between the engineer who’s interested in the job and the one who needs it filled.

The Capacity Problem

A specialist desk embedded in space can put a whole team on a single skill set. If a client needs thirty propulsion engineers in a quarter, several recruiters work that search together to make it happen. One or two internal recruiters covering every department at once don’t have that option, no matter how good they are.

Space Recruitment Is Harder Than Other Engineering Sectors

We’ve mentioned a few reasons why space roles take longer to fill than most technical searches. But space is also different from other engineering sectors in a few specific ways.

The Mid-Career Experience Gap in Space Engineering

Space startups are securing funding and growing faster than the industry can produce the talent to staff them. The number of companies raising early-stage funding in the space economy has more than doubled since 2016, per Space Capital’s Space IQ report. There simply aren’t enough mid-level engineers who’ve seen a program through from start to finish, and for a startup to succeed, that’s the experience sweet spot.

These candidates aren’t out there applying for jobs. They don’t have to. They move based on trusted relationships and opportunities passed along the grapevine. That’s where an experienced space recruiter’s network can help, and where your TA team could really struggle.

And mid-career candidates won’t move for just any role either. Recruiters experienced in the space industry have seen enough to tell you what it takes to stand out as an employer of choice. They know what it takes to compete for that candidate, and how to close someone already weighing two or three other offers.

Security Clearance and ITAR Requirements

Because most clients in the space industry are government entities, the need for candidates who are already security cleared, combined with ITAR requirements, adds another layer of complexity.

Cleared candidates are already scarce, and competition is increasing. Add ITAR and export-control rules on top, and they rule out large parts of the general talent pool before a search even starts.

Geographic Concentration of Space Talent

Space talent clusters in a handful of hubs. For example, Colorado alone employs more than 55,000 people directly in aerospace and ranks first in the nation for aerospace employment per capita. A hiring surge in one of these hubs pits every employer there against the same small local pool, unless you find someone willing to relocate.

Relocation isn’t new in this industry, but it’s less avoidable than in most. A software company facing a tough local market can make the role remote. In Space, that won’t work because physical hardware, test campaigns, and secure facilities keep the job tied to one site. That means a hiring surge in one of these hubs pits every employer there against the same small local pool, unless you find someone willing to relocate. A relocation process needs to be handled with gloves to make sure everything goes to plan. That’s part and parcel of recruiting in the space industry, and we advise candidates on it daily.

Compressed Program Timelines

Commercial satellite programs now typically move from contract start to launch in 2 to 3 years, against a US government average of more than 10 years for complex space systems. That means missing the hiring window on a two-year program means liftoff never happens.

A Specialist Recruiter Means Time Back for Your TA Team

A TA function still has a place in an early-stage space company that a specialist desk can’t replace. They understand the company’s culture, its full hiring needs across every department, and the day-to-day relationship with each hiring manager. Your internal TA team can make the case for what makes your company worth joining, the culture, and the mission you’re on.

The space industry has real hiring challenges, but you don’t have to solve them with your internal team alone. Specialists who have helped space startups scale from seed to Series C bring a network of security-cleared, passive engineers and enough dedicated people to work the hardest searches. That’s the gap a specialist desk fills, so your TA team can focus on everything only they can do.

How To Turn Your Technical Test Into Your Best Recruiting Tool

Posted on by Jones

We know you want the best technical talent out there, but most engineers in space already have a job they like. They don’t need to prove themselves and have no desire to spend hours working on a technical test. Finding and keeping the best engineers means rethinking how you use the limited time you get with them. We’ll show you how.

Does Your Interview Process Attract Passive Talent? 

A flight software engineer who’s shipped mission-critical code, or a GNC engineer who’s run their algorithms through a live validation cycle, is usually a few years into a role they’re not desperate to leave. And if they are thinking of leaving, their LinkedIn inbox is already flooded with opportunities. 

That’s what “passive candidate” means in practice: comfortably employed, not browsing job boards, and only interested if something compelling enough comes along.  If your mission and your product appeal to an engineer, they’ll apply their own filters before saying yes to an interview. Once you’ve got a strong candidate interested, the last thing you want is to lose the candidate due to an overly complicated technical stage.

We’ve been seeing engineers leaning toward the promise of faster liftoff startups offer and away from the slower pace of primes. This alone should tell you what they would expect from your interview process. 

The Cost of a Technical Test 

A take-home technical test is meant to filter for skill. In practice, it filters for something else: the willingness to sacrifice limited free time.

An active candidate will usually make the time. A passive one has no reason to. If you’re interviewing high-demand talent your recruiter has managed to headhunt directly, your interview process is as much a selling point as your company.

A take-home makes sense if you’re testing a developer. For a structural or propulsion engineer, the equivalent ask is a design review or a walkthrough of a real analysis. Either way, the test is a warning sign: it means the company hasn’t thought about the candidate’s time at all. 

A Screening Process Designed for Passive Talent 

One of our recruiters watched a fast-growing engineering team solve this exact problem. Every strong engineer they interviewed had other opportunities coming their way, sometimes half a dozen or more. A four-hour take-home test wasn’t just unpopular. It was actively costing them candidates.

So what did they do? 

They replaced a four-hour technical test with a 90-minute technical conversation. Here’s what they talked about:

  • how the candidate approached a real flight software or GNC problem they’ve shipped
  • tools they used
  • what their process looked like on a real project
  • how they’d handle a crisis

That’s it. That change in their interview process helped the company grow its engineering team from two people to 45 over roughly four years, with a 98% retention rate across that period.

An Interview Process to Attract and Retain the Best Engineers 

Here’s what to change if you want the same results with the passive engineering talent you need.

A considered interview process is not a checkbox exercise. This example proves that interviews can impact your long-term candidate retention as much as they can help you vet the technical skills you need. 

  • Replace the take-home with a scoped, time-boxed conversation, no more than 90 minutes, with the team the engineer will be working with.
  • Ask about work they’ve already done: What have they built? Why have they made this decision and not that one? What would they change now? 
  • Respect the clock. If a passive candidate has agreed to interview, don’t spend it testing their patience.  

A 90-minute conversation about how someone solves problems in the real world raises the bar on the candidates you have access to. It tests the actual job, not a synthetic one. Most of what a strong engineer does day to day is explain tradeoffs, defend decisions, and think out loud with teammates, not solve an isolated puzzle alone. A conversation tests that directly. A take-home tests something adjacent to it at best.

None of that matters if the candidate never hears about the role in the first place. Reach is still the harder problem, and it’s where a recruiter earns their keep: spotting the right profile, building the relationship, and selling the opportunity well enough that someone happily employed says yes to a conversation.

The Takeaway

Every open role in space is competing for a small pool of people who mostly aren’t looking. Your best candidate is not waiting to prove themselves. By using your interview slots wisely, you can show an engineer you value their time and skills. By doing that, you’ll find and keep the engineers who will help you scale.

How many roles are you hiring for, and over what period? If there’s one hire you can’t afford to get wrong, hand it to us. You don’t have the time to chase a candidate pool this small on your own, and you shouldn’t have to. If you’re not sure which of our solutions fits where you’re at, take a look and find the right one for your stage. 

Space’s Defense Boom Comes With a Staffing Problem: What Founders Need to Know

Posted on by Jones

The US Defense Department is beefing up its space capabilities and companies of all sizes are getting in on it. The problem? To deliver on these contracts, they’re all after the same finite thing: people with existing security clearance.

More and More Space Companies Are Chasing Defense Dollars

Lately, a lot of money has been directed towards defense work, especially for work in the space industry:

  • President Trump created the Office of Golden Dome for America in May 2025, tasked with building a new missile defense system with major space components.
  • Defense-tech VC funding hit an all-time high of $14.6 billion in the first five months of 2026 alone, already past all of 2025’s full-year record of $9.6 billion.
  • The Space Force’s FY2027 budget request would more than double its FY2026 funding, a 124% jump and the largest proposed increase for any military service in roughly 75 years.

Not Everyone Can Staff the Contract

Defense leaning into space is good news for startups who want to get in on the action. That’s exactly what the Department of War had in mind with the digital hub they opened on the 11th of August. The hub has been built specifically to pull more startups and commercial space companies into Golden Dome-adjacent work. It sits alongside the Missile Defense Agency’s SHIELD contract vehicle, which has now approved 2,440 of 2,463 applicant companies for a pool worth up to $151 billion.

Approval Is No Longer the Bottleneck

That’s a 99% approval rate, and here’s what happens when you get approved. A SHIELD approval means you can now bid on task orders. It’s not a funded contract. Most of the companies in that 2,440 will never see funded work under it. The Missile Defense Agency has said as much directly. So winning task orders is one problem. Staffing them with cleared people is a separate one, and it’s the one that takes the most time. Here’s our advice: as a rule of thumb, if you can’t answer ‘Who will do this work, at what clearance level, and by when?’ before you sign, you’re not ready to bid.

Who You Know, Not Just What You Know  

It’s important for startup founders to understand what they’re up against once they win a slice of the defense pie. Picture this: you just won your first Golden Dome-adjacent task order. Congrats. Now you have 90 days to staff five TS/SCI roles or risk losing the contract. 

Investment into the defense industry may prompt more engineers to get clearance sorted in time. But for now, the skills shortage is very real, even for founders who don’t need cleared talent.

Add a need for clearance into the mix and it’s a double whammy. When it comes to cleared talent, the problem is not only “who can do the job?” but “who do you know that can do the job?”.

Why Cleared Roles Are So Hard to Fill

First, let’s clarify a common misconception. Founders often treat a lack of cleared talent the way they’d treat any other space hiring gap: too few systems engineers, too few propulsion specialists, not enough people who’ve built flight hardware before. Let’s throw more money at it. It’s an easy mistake to make in an industry where talent is so hard to come by anyway. But a skills gap is one you can only close with training, time, or a strong enough offer, while a shortage of cleared talent is a paperwork problem that’s out of your hands.

Cleared Hiring Is a Network Game 

You either hold clearance at a given level or you don’t. It’s not something you can grow into or “pick up on the job”. We’ve seen how work moves on the government-facing side of this industry. Almost nobody lands a defense-adjacent role based on a cold application. They get it through a person they already worked with: a former colleague, a past program, or someone from the same small, security-cleared circle they’ve known for years. That’s why no amount of money solves your immediate problem of hiring a cleared engineer.

In the words of Sam Wiltshire, one of our own recruiters:

“If they need clearance to start with, it makes the search harder, because […] there’s only a limited number of people that are cleared.”

You Have Two Options

Startups have two options when it comes to hiring cleared talent: hire engineers who are already cleared, or wait for clearance to come through once you’ve extended an offer. Both have their problems, but your best bet is the first. There are no easy answers when it comes to retaining cleared talent for defense contracts.

How Clearance Works in the US

The Three Clearance Levels

There are three levels of clearance available in the US: Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret, each requiring a deeper federal background investigation than the one before it. The investigation covers finances, foreign contacts, criminal history, and drug use, going back further and digging harder the higher the level.

Accessing cleared talent is all about timing, and startups in space need the talent yesterday to avoid wasting their runway. But time is not on your side when you have to get clearance sorted from scratch.

In the first quarter of fiscal 2026, it took between 156 days and 227 days for most of the Secret and Top Secret Clearances to finish. If a candidate already holds an active clearance at the same level from a previous cleared role, reciprocity typically allows a new employer to bring them onto a contract in one to four weeks instead.

But Wait, Can You Sponsor Clearance?

Before advertising cleared roles, founders need to ensure their company can legally sponsor a clearance. Even if you’ve raised a strong round and won a real defense-adjacent contract, you can’t sponsor a single clearance if your business doesn’t have what’s called a Facility Security Clearance (FSC).

Here’s what founders are up against:

  • FSC timeline: 3 – 6 months
  • New clearance: 5 – 7+ months
  • Reciprocity: 1 – 4 weeks

So the time it takes you to hire and clear the team directly determines when you can deliver. Cleared talent is not a separate HR issue; it’s the key to delivering your contract on time.

Runway Math: How Clearance Timelines Eat Your Cash 

Win the contract and use it to sponsor the FSC. Only then can clearance sponsorship start for anyone you hire. The FSC process itself typically runs three to six months from sponsorship to approval, longer if the paperwork comes back incomplete on the first pass.

What changes the hiring outcome is where you stand the day the FSC clears. If the people you want are already cleared, reciprocity turns their start date into weeks. If you’re starting the candidate search from zero on the same day, you’re stacking two multi-month timelines back to back. That also means you’re looking at eight to thirteen months, the better part of a year, before anyone’s doing billable work on the contract. 

Getting ahead of that means building relationships with cleared candidates before the FSC exists to sponsor them. Your job as a founder is to get into that circle before you need it. A recruiter who already knows the cleared talent pool can be doing the groundwork of networking with already cleared engineers, while your paperwork is still moving through DCSA. Winning the contract isn’t the finish line. Delivering on it depends on the cleared-staffing plan you built before you signed.