Ask a random engineer to name space companies and you'll get SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, and (if they're paying attention) Anduril. Maybe Vast if they read the Hacker News threads. That's about it.
The catalog tracks 44 employers in space. The other 30 are actively hiring. If you're on the market and you only look at the big five, you're missing 90% of the industry.
Below is a working list, grouped by what they actually do. I've excluded the household names since they don't need my help getting attention.
New-space launch (not the big three)
Ursa Major — Rocket engines. Based in Berthoud, CO. Series D. They build propulsion for other people's rockets, and increasingly defense missiles. 43 open roles, mostly propulsion and test.
Stoke Space — Reusable second-stage launcher (Nova). Kent, WA. Series B. 54 active roles. Small team, real hardware, engines already firing. Test lead roles at Moses Lake go up to $328K max.
Inversion Space — Reentry vehicles. El Segundo. 57 active roles. Working on carrying cargo back from orbit. Small but growing fast (24 net new in 30 days).
Space stations and habitats
Vast — Haven-1 crewed station and successors. Long Beach. Series A. 152 active. Founded by Jed McCaleb (ex-Ripple/Stellar). Very software-forward for a space station company.
Sierra Space — Dream Chaser + LIFE inflatable habitats. Louisville, CO. Series B. 165 active roles. Adjacent to old-guard aerospace but funded like a startup.
Axiom Space — Commercial ISS module and eventually free-flyer station. Houston. Series C. 54 roles. Old-space cadence, new-space ambition.
Satellite constellations
Astranis — Small GEO comms satellites. San Francisco. Series D. 86 active. Been quietly building a real business.
K2 Space — Large-bus satellite platform. Los Angeles. Series B. 151 active. Aggressive Series B hire.
Planet Labs — Earth observation. San Francisco. Public. 84 roles. The OG of small-sat imagery.
Spire Global — Weather, maritime, aviation data. Vienna and DC. Public. 52 roles.
Muon Space — Multi-purpose satellite platform. Mountain View. Series B. 46 roles.
Loft Orbital — Satellite-as-a-service (hosted payloads). San Francisco. Series B. 58 roles.
Kepler Communications — Communications relay network. Toronto. Real revenue. 33 roles.
Space defense / national security
True Anomaly — Space defense and on-orbit maneuvering. Denver + Long Beach. Series B. 181 active roles. Founded by ex-Space Force officers. Series B pay competitive with defense-tech unicorns.
Anduril's space division — Included here even though Anduril itself is a household name in defense. The space arm (rocket motors, hypersonics, space systems) hires distinctly and is one of the top-5 hiring engines in space right now.
HawkEye 360 — Radio-frequency intelligence from space. Herndon, VA. 14 active roles.
BlackSky — High-cadence imagery for government + commercial. Herndon, VA. Public. 30 roles.
Slingshot Aerospace — Space situational awareness. El Segundo + remote. Series A2. 51 roles. Real customer traction on the SSA side.
Turion Space — On-orbit servicing + space defense. Redondo Beach. 22 roles.
Xona Space Systems — LEO GNSS/PNT constellation. San Mateo. 51 roles. Building a GPS alternative.
Quindar — Mission control software for satellite operators. Small team. 14 roles.
In-space servicing / cislunar
Varda Space — Pharma manufacturing in microgravity. El Segundo. Series B. 90 roles. Actually launching and recovering payloads.
Impulse Space — Orbital transfer vehicles. El Segundo. Small team, real hardware, deep engineering culture.
GITAI USA — Space robotics (in-space assembly, lunar ops). California + Japan. Small team. 4 US roles.
Icarus Industries — Fast-mode space hardware. El Segundo. 24 roles.
Aerospace-adjacent (launched from space specific companies)
Voyager Technologies — Formerly Voyager Space; combined Nanoracks + others + new Starlab station work. Public. 87 roles. Denver-based.
Momentus — Space transportation. Small team. 12 roles.
LeoLabs — Space tracking + radar network. 15 roles.
European
Isar Aerospace — European launch startup (Spectrum vehicle). Munich. Series C. 87 active US-viewable roles.
ispace — Lunar landers (Hakuto-R). Tokyo + Denver + Luxembourg. 35 roles.
The pattern here
Almost every one of these companies is at a stage where a senior engineer's individual work has visible impact on the company's trajectory. That's the actual pitch for joining a Series A-C space company over SpaceX or Blue Origin. You're not one of 10,000 engineers. You're one of 30 to 300, and if you're good you'll ship things that matter.
The comp is worse on average, though "worse" is often $10-20K below what a comparable role at SpaceX pays for the median engineer, not the crushing gap people assume. Some of these companies (Vast, K2, True Anomaly, Stoke) pay above SpaceX's median band because they're competing for talent.
How to actually evaluate one of these
Three things I'd look at before applying:
The lead technical person. On LinkedIn: check that the CTO or head of engineering has real space or hardware background, not just a general software resume. New-space companies with software-heavy leadership often make hardware mistakes that a Boeing/Lockheed lifer would avoid.
Actual test cadence. Companies at Series A/B live and die by test milestones. If a company is quiet on hardware progress for 12+ months, that's a bad sign. If they're firing engines, launching cubesats, or hitting integration milestones publicly, that's real.
Runway math. Series A companies with 30 employees have 12-24 months of runway. Series B companies with 100 employees might have 18-30. If a company's hiring pace is aggressive but they haven't announced a fresh round in 15+ months, understand what you're signing up for.
Methodology
Data pulled May 4, 2026 from active job listings on MadeForSpace.io. I filtered to companies with between 3 and 25 active postings (the "actively hiring but not household name" band) and added a few notable exceptions with more roles that most engineers still don't know about. Company stage and HQ come from the companies table in the catalog.
Browse the full company list sorted by hiring velocity. If a company you'd expect to see isn't here, they either don't have ATS integration we can pull from, or they're between hiring waves.