Funding week = hiring week

Hello everyone!

It’s a big week.

On one hand, we have great news: today is a big day for Ariane 64. The rocket is now sitting on the pad in Korou ready to launch Amazon’s satellites. This will be the first launch of this rocket configuration so definitely something to watch.

European space startups just raised over €50M in a single week. From thermal intelligence to propulsion factories, the cash is definitely flowing again. It seems investors have realised that "dual-use" (a nice word for defense) is a very profitable business model right now.

And speaking of building... we have a big update for you coming very soon. We are moving from "just a newsletter" to a real career platform. (See below)

But on the other hand, we have bad news. Orbex has officially filled for administration. The rumours were true: after failing to close their Series D and finding no buyers, they have declared bankruptcy. A difficult reminder that things can get rough pretty fast.

Let's get into the jobs, the money and the rockets 👇

🚀 Spotlight: New on findaspacejob.com

Here are some of the best space jobs available today:

• ESA/ELGRA Gravity-Related Research Summer School 2026 @ ELGRA/ESA (Belgium)

  👉 Guess you didn’t know what ELGRA is, right? Not technically a job opportunity but still nice for all of my student friends 👊

• PhD Research Fellow in Cosmology @ University of Oslo (Norway)

  👉 Probably the PhD most of you were waiting for… if you love cosmology and astrophysics :) 2 positions available so hurry up!

• Product Manager @ CesiumAstro (Germany)

  👉 Product Manager at a space startup o.O pretty rare and pretty cool! (Plus they raised good money not so long ago… very very good money)

• Systems Engineer @ SKAO (UK)

  👉 Want to work on building the largest radio telescope at an international organisation (and do so from sunny Manchester)?

• Software Architect @ Airbus (UK)

  👉 Translate business goals into robust software architectures and solutions, and then help develop them.

• Gimbal Control Engineer @ MBRYONICS (Ireland)

  👉 First role (of many!) based in Ireland 🇮🇪 there’s space for everyone ;)

• Commercial Director @ Involve Space (Italy)

  👉 Someone’s got to be responsible for selling, right? Well this could be you here at a startup building stratospheric balloons.

• ESA Graduate Trainee in Earth Observation Data Science @ ESA (Italy)

  👉 Young data science graduate with a space focus… anyone? A great opportunity to join ESA and start working in the space industry.

• Satellite Operations Internship @ German Orbital Systems (Germany)

  👉 Another internship role: work on satellite operations planning, flight dynamics, orbit determination, commissioning… and a lot more

But these are not all. If you don’t see a role you like here, go check the job board for the full list. And if not, tell me: what role are you looking to get?

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🗞️ News: it’s funding week!

1. Orbex enters administration

   The rumours were unfortunately true. Orbex has filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators. What happened? They failed to close their Series D funding round and explored several merger & acquisition opportunities (one was with The Exploration Company), but none succeeded.

   It’s very unfortunate always to see a company shutdown operations but building rockets is indeed very difficult technically and economically. CEO Phil Chambers put it bluntly: "We have worked tirelessly to find funding... but the scale-up funding gap is real." Good luck to all the people affected by this! I’m sure you will have no problem in finding a role but I hope we can help you do so fast!

   Read more here

2. Ariane 64 debut

   If you only watch one thing this week, make it this. Today (if you read this today though), the first-ever Ariane 64 (the heavy version with 4 boosters) is scheduled to launch from Kourou. This mission will carry the first batch of Amazon Project Kuiper (now Amazon Leo) satellites… so this time will be Europe launching USA satellites… 😎

   The window opens at 1pm UTC so don't miss it.

3. Constellr raises €37M series A

   The German startup just closed a massive €37M Series A round to accelerate their thermal intelligence constellation.

   The pivot: they started with agriculture (monitoring water stress), but this funding has been significantly led by the defence and military applications thermal satellites can provide (detecting activity from space based on heat signatures). A huge win for European sovereign intelligence capabilities.

4. Morpheus Space raises €15M

   Morpheus Space is scaling up. The company secured €15M to support the mass production of their electric propulsion systems at their facility in Dresden. With satellites needing to be more agile than ever (to avoid debris or... other satellites), "in-orbit mobility" is becoming a critical subsystem. And yes, they said the magic word: they will be hiring.

5. Powering the Moon from Riga 💪

   A smaller quantity but still great: Deep Space Energy secured €930K to advance radioisotope power systems (basically: nuclear batteries) for the Moon. Solar power is great, but the lunar night lasts 14 days. If we want permanent bases, we need power that doesn't rely on the sun; so it’s good someone is thinking about this already.

6. OBH Italia gets €81M for the Ramses probe

   ESA has officially awarded OHB Italia a €81M contract for the construction and testing phase of the Ramses asteroid probe. Ramses will rendezvous with the asteroid Apophis (which will pass “close” to Earth in 2029). It’s a big scientific and planetary defense mission.

👀 A small update

Quick behind the scenes update. We’re about to release something many of you have asked for: accounts for job seekers.

Soon you’ll be able to:

• Create your own profile ✅

• Upload your CV ✅

• (and this is the cool part) eventually get contacted directly by companies 🔜

This is step one towards turning Find a Space Job from “just” a job board into something more useful for your career. (Although we’ve never been “just” a job board and you know it 💪

Right now it’s still simple, just a clean way to exist professionally on soon-to-be the best space focussed platform. AI and auto apply and all that stuff will come later, don’t worry ;)

This will come out very very soon (it might already be out by the time you read this email who knows) so please do try it out and share your feedback.

And if you made it this far and have just finished reading this update… here’s a sneak peek of my current situation at the time of writing this email (but I really promise it’ll be out soon… haha, for real) - I’m joking, of course.

After this… I’ve got nothing else to say!

Until next Thursday!

P.S. Hiring? Post your role here

As usual: connect on LinkedIn and follow the Find a Space Job for updates.