Space industry hiring: August 2026

Coverage change (2026-09-01): Blue Origin’s Workday board joined the tracker (+≈1,590 postings). Totals jump on this date reflects expanded coverage, not market hiring. Month-over-month comparisons spanning this date are affected accordingly.

The SpaceNexus Monthly Hiring Index is built from our jobs tracker, which syncs live postings daily from 62 employer sources: applicant-tracking-system boards (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workday and others) at space companies and roles employers post on SpaceNexus directly. At defense primes and large contractors only space-segment roles count: a role counts when its title names space work (a space discipline, program, customer or space business unit). The employer list and each one's rule are on the jobs board. A posting counts as active when it is live on the employer's own board at our most recent sync; postings that disappear from a board are marked inactive, and duplicates across boards are scrubbed during ingestion.

Per-company counts come from daily snapshots taken since August 13, 2026. “Active postings” is the last site-wide snapshot on or before the month's final day; “fastest movers” compares each company's first and last snapshot within the month (for this first edition that window is Aug 13–31, since snapshot history begins mid-month). When the way an employer's roles are counted changed during the month (for example, narrowed to space roles), its movers reading starts on the day of the change, so the removed roles never show as a hiring drop. “New postings” counts roles whose posted date falls inside the calendar month (UTC). Companies without a linked profile appear under their board's name as-is.

Same-employer change and the index level. The headline total moves when we start or stop tracking an employer, so each edition also compares month-end postings at employers tracked on the same basis at both month ends, the way retailers report same-store sales. An employer is left out of a month's comparison when its first snapshot came after the prior month end, or when its coverage rule changed during the month; an employer tracked at the prior month end with no job postings at this one counts as zero. Chaining those monthly changes gives the index level (2026-08 = 100), which coverage changes cannot move.