LA aerospace hiring signals

Hiring posts this week suggest Los Angeles aerospace companies are still adding engineers, even as other tech sectors stay cautious. (cbre.com) Terran Orbital’s current jobs board lists 38 openings, including guidance, navigation and control engineers, flight software engineers, and a senior spacecraft systems engineer in Irvine. Guidance, navigation and control is the software-and-sensors work that keeps a spacecraft pointed, stable and on course. (job-boards.greenhouse.io) A Francisco Partners careers listing for Terran Orbital says its guidance, navigation and control engineers handle analysis, software, hardware, testing and integration. A recruiter post on X this week also advertised a founding guidance, navigation and control engineer role tied to the Los Angeles market. (careers.franciscopartners.com) (x.com) The hiring is landing in a region where aerospace already has scale. CBRE said Los Angeles County’s aerospace product and parts manufacturing industry employed 45,200 workers as of December 2024, up 3.4% over five years and 9.2% over 10 years. (cbre.com) Federal money has helped keep that base intact. CBRE said Los Angeles County companies received $315 million in direct Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funding in fiscal 2024, the highest total of any U.S. county and 16% of nationwide funding. (cbre.com) Capital has been chasing the sector at the same time. PitchBook said defense tech startups raised $28.4 billion across 361 deals through the first half of 2025, after $19.1 billion in the second quarter alone, with median pre-money valuations rising to $115 million from $61.3 million in 2024. (files.pitchbook.com) That money has shown up on the ground in El Segundo, the South Bay city that has become a dense cluster for space and defense firms. CBRE said El Segundo’s vacancy rate was 3.4% in early 2026, with demand coming from space companies, government contractors and technology startups. (cbre.com) Varda Space Industries expanded there in March with a 205,443-square-foot lease on Mariposa Avenue, and CBRE said the site will add capacity to manufacture spacecraft and reentry capsules. That kind of factory expansion usually pulls in the same hands-on systems, test and simulation talent now showing up in job posts. (cbre.com) The latest postings do not prove a hiring boom on their own, and some roles can stay open for months. But in Los Angeles aerospace, the mix of live engineering requisitions, fresh venture funding and scarce South Bay space still points in one direction: companies are building teams to ship hardware. (job-boards.greenhouse.io) (files.pitchbook.com) (cbre.com)