Investing in Space: Houston, we have job openings – CNBC

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket carrying Crew Dragon spacecraft Endurance launches the Crew-5 mission for NASA from Florida on Oct. 5, 2022.

Joel Kowsky | NASA

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In an increasingly tight labor market, the space sector is hiring. (Don't get too excited, the jobs are still Earth-bound.)

There are nearly 8,400 openings at "infrastructure" space companies, the likes of which build and operate rockets and spacecraft, according to venture firm Space Capital and its Space Talent database.

A lot of the new hires, according to Justus Kilian, partner at Space Capital, come from the tech sector, which has seen hiring freezes and job cuts as companies brace for economic downturn.

"You actually see talent floating around, because their skills are so transferable. They're going to each of these different industries, job after job, and just following each other working on the biggest, most exciting, most complicated problems," Kilian said.

Last week, Astra announced the appointment of new CFO Axel Martinez, with the company's current finance chief Kelyn Brannon transitioning out of the role later this year. Both Martinez and Brannon come from tech backgrounds.

But Kilian says the space sector often falls short in the competitive talent pool on vision and compensation. Space companies are often led by technical people "fixated on the technical problem" and lacking the ability to inspire, he said. And salary levels at big tech, robotics, autonomous vehicles, motorsports and telecommunications are hard to match.

"You're not competing with Google on salary you just can't," Kilian said. "You've got to be inspiring people around the thing they're building and why it matters."

There are regulatory hurdles in the U.S. space sector, too. International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR, essentially mean only American citizens, or foreigners with a green card, can access items on the U.S. Munitions List. That list mostly includes defense-related equipment and software, but widely covers rocket and spacecraft technologies, too.

While difficult to measure precisely how many jobs are ITAR-restricted, Kilian used SpaceX as a proxy and found that, of 977 roles listed by the company, 348 mentioned ITAR in the description or about 36%.

"Our best talent is foreign talent. Tech eats that up; aerospace loses because it can't recruit," Kilian said.

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Investing in Space: Houston, we have job openings - CNBC