Want To Be A Rocket Scientist? You’re Hired!
Last night a winged rocket was dropped from an airplane off the California coast and launched a new telescope into orbit, giving scientists a new way to look at the sun. But the launch also highlights something equally remarkable down here on the ground: the white hot demand for rocket scientists demonstrates what it takes to find a job in the midst of what many believe is a largely jobless economic recovery.
The unemployment rate in the U.S. still hovers around the mid-seven percent range. But those in charge of delivering products to space are desperately trying to fill vacant spots. If you can design a rocket motor, or a spacecraft, or simply want to work for a company where going to space is what pays the bills, there may be a job waiting for you.
Qualifications:
A Bachelors Degree (BA/BS) in Chemistry, Engineering, Math, Physics
That, along with seven years experience, is the very short list of qualifications for the opening of Principal Engineer at Orbital Sciences, the company that launched the rocket last night.What will your job include? Apparently plenty of rocket fuel and launch pad work.
Manage scheduling of fluid and gas supply chain to ensure uninterrupted availability of commodities for launch vehicle and launch complex test and operations.
Finding the person who launched little Estes rockets in the backyard as a kid, and graduating them to overseeing a 133 foot tall Antares rocket weighing in at 530,000 pounds is just one of 21 jobs Orbital is looking to fill.
The private launch business is growing, fast. Several companies from new rocket startups, to the established prime contractors are facing the same challenge found in other expanding sectors of the recovering economy: Where are the people who can fill the jobs?
Former NASA engineers, scientists and even astronauts are filling some of the jobs. But all of the companies are eagerly hiring recent college graduates and others from outside the industry. Today the industry is seeking the kind people who want to make the same impact on the private space race, that the 20- and 30-something engineers had on the original space race 50 years ago.
Space tourism companies like the relatively big Virgin Galactic has 44 open listings. Its smaller neighbor at the Mojave Air and Space Port, XCOR, has four jobs open. Both are competing with each other and others in the space industry. The competition is to to find enough people with enough math and science, the STEM crowd. They are looking for well rounded, actual rocket scientists:
[Virgin Galactic] is seeking a multidisciplinary engineer with a strong background in rocket propulsion systems including composite case rocket motors and high pressure fluid systems (preferably hybrid rocket propulsion systems). Background should include design, manufacturing, assembly and testing.
I’m not sure how the brain surgeon job market is right now, but it’s clear if you can fulfill the other stereotype of a smart person, your paycheck is waiting. Perhaps it’s no big surprise that many of these jobs can trace their origins to another booming job market right now, the computer/software industry.
Paul Allen made a few bucks at Microsoft and spent some of it investing in SpaceShipOne, the project from Scaled Composites and Burt Rutan that led to Virgin Galactic and The Spaceship Company.
Jeff Bezos’ secretive Blue Origin rocket has a somewhat sparse website compared to its Amazon.com cousin. But every page lists the company’s 26 job openings on the right column.
David Masten left the software and IT world to create a workshop full of small autonomous rockets that can take off and land on their own. He’s got seven openings including yet another rocket engineer:
Masten Space Systems seeks a Propulsion Engineer capable of designing, as well as managing production and testing of a range of reusable liquid propellant rocket engines.
Elon Musk converted his PayPal payday into several companies, including SpaceX. Today with a backlog of launches for both private and government customers, Musk’s company has 203 job openings to fill. And the company isn’t shy about it’s goals or what a new hire might be working on:
Senior Propulsion Analyst - Turbomachinery
The Falcon Launch Vehicle and Dragon Spacecraft programs are some of the most ambitious engineering systems in the world, designed to support our ultimate goals of aviation-like spaceflight capability and making humanity a multi-planet species.
Of course not everybody wants to be (or is cut out to be) a rocket scientist. But the booming space launch business has you covered if you’re in HR,you’re a business manager, a line cook (at SpaceX HQ), and naturally they’re looking to hire “recruitment coordinators” to headhunt the other spots. The industry is much hotter than the 2.7K that fills the vacuum of space.
Even with the hundreds of other listings at companies like ATK, Bigelow, Sierra Nevada Corporation and Aerojet/Rocketdyne, rocket scientists alone won’t push the unemployment rate back to pre-recession levels. But the writing in the sky is pretty clear. The geeks who played with rockets as kids are doing well in the jobless recovery.
