Navigating A Candidate-Led Space Hiring Market

The recent explosion in growth in the space and deep tech industries is causing a talent shortage for companies who need to hire quickly. The result is a shift in dynamics in the market, with the balance of power tilting firmly toward in-demand candidates. 

A candidate-led market (vs. an employer-led market) has immediate implications for companies looking to hire talent in these sectors. In this article, I’ll share some of the ways we recommend approaching hiring in this market, as well as other tips on how you can effectively navigate this transition. 

Candidate-Led and Employer-Led Markets: How Are They Different? 

While there are other factors, supply and demand drives whether hiring in an industry is candidate-led or employer-led cycle. When there are more qualified job seekers than available jobs, employers have more leverage. When open positions outnumber qualified talent available, job seekers with in-demand skills have more leverage.  

As you would expect, candidate-led markets tend to coincide with period of economic growth. In the case of the current candidate-led space and deep tech market, the demand is being driven by a significant increase in specialized talent across a large number of companies in the sphere.1 Conversely, employer-led markets are often brought about by economic slowdowns or labor surpluses, when companies can afford to be choosier and offer fewer incentives to hire top candidates. There’s often not a middle ground between the two types of hiring markets; leverage tends to swing like a pendulum between the two extremes. 

To understand just how cyclical hiring markets can be, one needs only to look at the 2010s through the early 2020s. During that decade, many high-growth sectors (tech, healthcare, renewable energy, etc.) experienced a sustained candidate-driven run, with job seekers frequently juggling multiple offers, negotiating higher salaries and generally dictating terms. Then, shifts in 2023 and 2024 including rising interest rates, a cooling economy and technological advances quickly pushed some industries toward more employer-led markets,2 which have sustained throughout 2025. These markets don’t last forever, but when you’re in one, it’s critical that you’re able to pivot your hiring approach to the current reality. 

What’s Driving the Candidate-Led Hiring Market in Space? 

The current candidate-led hiring market in space marks a rebound from the mixed conditions of the early-2020s. During the peak of the “NewSpace” boom in 2020 and 2021, as a result of record venture funding and a proliferation of startups aggressively hiring talent, the job market was notably candidate-driven. That momentum was briefly tempered in 2022–2023 when venture capital tightened and a few high-profile space companies paused hiring or restructured.  

In a similar vein to 2020 and 2021, the scale of demand for space talent today once again far exceeds the supply. In 2025, the factors driving this pendulum swing include: 

• Resurgent Growth and Increased Company and Project Activity: Following a temporary dip in 2022 and 2023, the space industry’s growth trajectory has flipped back to growth in a big way. The expansion is being driven by burgeoning demand in satellite communications, launch services, Earth observation, and emerging domains like space tourism and in-orbit manufacturing. The rapid increase in commercial launches alone – 157 licensed launches in 2024, projected to rise to 172 in 20253 – provides a perfect example of how an increase in activity immediately drives hiring. More rockets and satellites mean more jobs (and more of the same types of jobs), quickly outpacing the growth of the talent pipeline. 

• Talent Shortages in Critical Skills: Because of the specialized nature of the work, many space and deep tech roles have a limited pool of talent to pull from. And because of the increases in funding in companies who are building for space environments, candidates with expertise in areas like aerospace engineering, avionics, propulsion, RF communications, and spacecraft software are only getting more difficult to hire. In the current moment, candidates with experience and skill in these areas know how intense competition is and can wait to get exactly what they want as a result. 

• Arms Races in a Multiple Offer Environment: In a candidate-led market, top talent is often evaluating multiple opportunities simultaneously, and that’s exactly what’s happening in the space sector right now. Many candidates, and especially those with cutting-edge technical skills or prior mission experience, are courted by numerous NewSpace startups, established aerospace primes, defense contractors, and even non-space tech firms. It’s not uncommon for a desirable engineer or project manager to receive several offers in parallel, putting pressure on each employer to move fast and put their best offer forward. The result drives up more than just salaries, also impacting other benefits and incentives as companies scramble to try to beat competitor offers.  

• Secular Trend of Private Investment in Space: Underlying the talent crunch is the massive influx of capital and new companies in the space sector over the past decade, which are in turn driving extremely attractive forecasts for future investment. The Space Economy is expected to balloon from $430 billion today to more than $1 trillion by 2030.4 That investor excitement around the sheer magnitude of the growth and specific space innovations translates into new ventures being funded on a consistent basis. Each funded startup (or each new program at a larger company) creates dozens or hundreds of new job openings. Crucially, these new jobs often require cutting-edge skills that few professionals outside the space sector possess. Space companies, therefore, end up competing not only with each other, but with adjacent industries (tech, defense, aviation) for the very same candidates who have the skills to do the work. 

It's easy for us to see what’s happening in the market, as we’re heavily plugged into the day-to-day recruiting, and these trends are in play in almost every hiring project we’re supporting. For those outside of space recruiting, the numbers tell the story just as effectively. 

Unemployment in aerospace fields remains extremely low (often under 2-3% for engineers).5 And salaries have climbed accordingly: the average U.S. space industry salary reached $135,000 in 2023, a 3.1% rise from 2022 and nearly double the national private-sector average wage of ~$72,600.3 Space firms are paying a premium to attract talent and are still struggling to fill roles promptly. 

The market needs driving candidate demand are also extremely space- and deep tech-specific, insulating the sector from other macroeconomic shifts. For example, large-scale layoffs over the past few years at enterprise firms and experimentation with generative AI and other AI tools have created a surplus of software developers and some levels of software engineers, creating an employer-led market for those roles. This did not affect the market for core space engineering or other roles critical to space manufacturing and development, which remain as tight and competitive as ever. 

The need for these roles and skill sets is such that candidates can be selective about not only compensation, but also mission alignment, company culture and growth opportunities. 

Hiring Strategies for Space Companies in a Candidate-Led Market 

So, what can space and deep tech employers do to win talent in an environment like this? At EVONA, we recommend a three-pillar strategy, focused on speed, specialization and competitiveness. 

We’ve included core strategies to help you outperform in all three of these areas and why each strategy can be uniquely helpful and valuable in the current candidate-driven market: 

• Streamline Your Hiring Process: In a candidate-led market, time-to-hire can make or break your recruiting outcome. Studies show roughly 62% of candidates lose interest if the hiring process takes too long,6 and elite candidates are often off the market within 10 days of starting a job search. Eliminating unnecessary delays in hiring means reviewing internal processes:  

• Are there too many interview rounds or approval layers?  

• Is scheduling cumbersome?  

• Where are there bottlenecks or points of friction and how can we remove them? 

If you’re looking for an area to focus on right now, reducing the time from application to offer is a great place to start. We’ve found that a target of under 30 days to fill is a good benchmark.  

Some of the tactics we’ve seen work to speed up this process include: 

• Conducting interviews in a coordinated “blitz” (e.g., panel interviews or scheduling all stages within a single week) 

• Empowering hiring managers with conditional offer authority to shorten approval time 

• Keeping candidates warm with frequent, personalized and relevant communications (so they know they’re still in consideration).  

Being decisive is the most important element here. If a candidate impresses, don’t wait to see what else is out there, as you might in an employer-led market. Chances are that another company is looking to scoop your candidate up. This doesn’t mean you should hire the first person you interview, just that you shouldn’t hold up the process when you already have someone you know will do well in the role. 

Taking Action: Treat hiring with the same urgency as a launch deadline, because the opportunity cost of losing great talent is high. 

• Offer Competitive and Creative Compensation Packages: When candidates hold the leverage, companies need to put their best foot forward in terms of compensation, benefits, and growth opportunities. 

For compensation, this means benchmarking pay against not only your aerospace peers but also current tech industry standards, since those are your talent competitors. Beyond salary, consider sweetening the deal with other incentives: 

• Equity or stock options (where possible) 

• Signing bonuses 

• Relocation assistance 

• Other unique perks (e.g. extra PTO, flexible hours around launch campaigns, education stipends for advanced degrees) 

While these can all help tip the scales in your favor, it’s also important to remember to operate within parameters based on what you can afford. Yes, top talent is critical to your success, but if you don’t retain enough budget or other resources for them to perform when they’re on board, you’re no better off than when you started. 

It’s also important to think beyond compensation. Emphasize the mission and future trajectory your company offers. The vision and their impact can matter a great deal to space professionals, and in addition to strong compensation, can make a difference in whether or not they choose you.  

At SpaceLink, for example, recruiters leaned into the fact that they’re building optical satellite relay networks, something engineers find “really exciting,” helping them lure talent despite stiff competition.5 Similarly, Redwire Space’s leadership found that highlighting involvement in multiple launches and a vision for an orbital economy attracted candidates who wanted to be on the cutting edge.5 

In the same vein, if your company is working on cutting-edge projects (e.g., satellite servicing, lunar landers, or national security spacecraft), make that a selling point. Candidates want to be excited about their work. 

Last but not least, don’t forget career development prospects. In a hot market, candidates will be asking, whether out loud or not, “Why should I join your company and not a competitor (or simply stay where I’m already employed)?” Showing a clear path for growth, learning, and leadership can be an important proactive and reactive way to show you have big plans for them if they choose you. 

Taking Action: Conduct a thorough review of your offers and any and all data you have on situations where you won and lost candidates. Identify why you are winning and losing and shore up those areas quickly. 

• Be Flexible and Adaptable in Your Role Requirements: In an employer-driven market, companies often list lengthy “must-have” qualifications and can afford to wait for a unicorn candidate. In a candidate-driven market, that approach leads to unfilled roles.  

Revisiting your job requirements is one simple way to increase your candidate pool without sacrificing candidate quality. Review your job descriptions to identify which skills and qualifications are truly critical versus those that can be learned on the job.  

Outside of the job descriptions themselves, consider interviewing candidates from adjacent industries (e.g. aviation, automotive, software, military) who have transferable skills. We’re seeing space companies increasingly embrace hiring from outside the traditional aerospace talent pool to broaden their reach, and they’re finding success bringing on candidates with core skills who can be trained in space-specific nuances.  

For instance, if avionics engineers are scarce, an electronics engineer from the auto industry with the right aptitude could be a great hire after some upskilling. Other transferable skills include data analysis, complex problem-solving, and systems engineering fundamentals.  

Additionally, open yourself to the possibility of offering remote or hybrid work options where feasible. While insistence on mandating on-site work for all roles was long a barrier in space, but many space companies are now allowing remote work for software-related positions or using distributed teams to access talent unwilling to relocate. This flexibility can significantly improve your chances of landing candidates who would otherwise turn down an offer due to location or other rigid policies. 

• Emphasize Company Culture, Speed of Innovation, and Impact: Many professionals in 2025, and that especially goes for younger engineers and scientists, value more than simply making money in their careers. These candidates want to join organizations with a positive culture, diverse and inclusive teams, and inspiring leadership.  

Space companies should highlight what makes their culture unique – whether it’s a startup’s fast-paced “build and fly” ethos or a larger firm’s mentorship and resources. Ensure your interview process also “sells” the candidate on why your team is the place to be. In a candidate-led market, the hiring process is a two-way street: candidates are judging you as much as you are judging them. A poor candidate experience (disorganized interviews, lack of communication, or a dismissive tone) can easily turn off talent and hurt your reputation in tight-knit space circles.  

Conversely, a candidate-focused approach that includes quick follow-ups, personal touches, and showing genuine excitement about the prospect of them joining will leave a much stronger impression. SpaceLink, for example, crafted a candidate-focused hiring process that ensured every applicant got personal attention and timely feedback, which pays dividends in both successful hires and company reputation.5  

• Leverage Specialist Recruiters and Talent Networks: The majority of recruiting platforms and software are classified as generalists, meaning that they offer candidates across all different types of roles and across every imaginable industry. These can be valuable tools in filling a range of varied roles, and especially those roles that are industry-agnostic (e.g., marketing manager, executive assistant, software developer, product manager, etc.). 

More specialized roles, however, require a deeper level of knowledge, access to and understanding of a niche talent pool, and the market intelligence that comes from a singular industry focus. In the candidate-led environment space companies find themselves competing in today, specialist recruitment firms like EVONA can give leaders, hiring managers and HR teams a critical, and often necessary, edge. That edge can show up in a few different ways: 

• Specialist firms offer deep networks of pre-vetted candidate and industry insights that both generalist platforms and more general human resources departments might lack. 

• Specialist recruiters, as experts in both recruiting and the space industry, bring market intelligence to every search and role. These recruiters know what competing companies are offering, where the passive candidates are, and how to best present opportunities to space professionals.  

• Specialist recruiters and recruiting processes can often screen and qualify candidates more efficiently than their generalist counterparts due to their in-depth understanding of the industry and the types of candidates who are in the highest demand. 

These advantages add up to benefits that can have a material impact on the metrics that drive recruiting success, including speed of sourcing, pipeline volume and quality, speed-to-hire and hire quality. In our case, we have been able to fill roles ranging from flight software engineers to operations managers in under 30 days by using our sector-specific reach and know-how. Especially for more specialized roles, any number of days you can eliminate from the process potentially speeds up that hire, as well as freeing you and your team up to do other things. 

One final benefit of specialized recruitment firms like EVONA is the access they provide into the communities in their niche. If you’re in the space market and hiring, you’re likely plugged in to some extent. A partnership with EVONA gives you an immediate presence with candidates before you meet them, expanding your reach without additional budget or initiatives on your end. 

We engage with space professionals constantly through industry events like Satellite and have even participated in space sector sessions at the White House. Our footprint absolutely helps us attract candidates for our clients’ openings. As the space hiring market gets even more competitive, having a talent partner who already knows the star players in the field can be a massive advantage. 

Taking Action: Evaluate your hiring needs for the next 12–18 months. For critical or numerous roles, consider retaining a space-focused recruitment agency to amplify your efforts.  

By putting these strategies into place, you can greatly improve your ability to attract top talent, even when candidates have their choice in which organizations to join. 

If you take one thing away from this article, it should be that treating candidates for your open roles like the valuable commodity they are is the only way you’re going to make the hires you need to continue to grow. In a candidate-led market, your agility and your commitment to a candidate-centric approach aren’t nice-to-haves. They will make all the difference in whether you win or lose talent. 

The ultimate high ground in the space race of the 21st century is talent. Every company tasked with creating a part of the Space Economy needs the people to help them build it. While the pendulum will eventually swing back to employers, skilled and in-demand candidates have their choice of organizations to work for right now.  

Be agile, be creative and be willing to do things differently, because you can’t afford to miss out on filling your most important roles in this market. By understanding the market dynamics and applying the strategies outlined here, you can turn the challenge of a candidate-driven market into an opportunity: to build not only the workforce you need, but to become an employer of choice in an industry that is quite literally reaching for the stars. 

If this article resonated with you, here’s a few more reasons to look at partnering with our team at EVONA: 

• Tracking market shifts: If you’re going to live at the intersection of recruiting and space, you need to be delivering value today while always looking ahead. We are proud of our ability to see what’s coming and to make sure our business, and our clients’ businesses, are ready to pivot when necessary. 

• Understanding of talent supply and demand: Because of the way we tracked metrics on applicant volume per position, average time-to-fill by role type, and reasons for candidate turndowns or offer rejections, we can counsel our clients on how to adjust in real-time. Essentially, we act as a market intelligence conduit to share recommendations based on market realities. 

• Quality and speed over quantity: As much as time is always of the essence in recruiting, if you’re constantly asking, “How can we possibly sift through so many applicants?,” you’re working with the wrong partner. We get you to a shortlist of 3-5 excellent candidates, not hundreds, making sure that we prioritize speed while never compromising on quality. 

• Prioritizing long-term partnerships: We can help you with one-off recruiting needs and our team is quite good at delivering on those projects, but we would prefer to build a longer-term, ongoing relationship with you. Having a trusted partner who you can go to whenever there’s a need benefits you, and a deeper knowledge of you and your business only makes us better at what we do.