What aerospace, defence and space companies hire for

Industry Vertical 39, Aerospace, defence and space, in Domain X, Industrial tech and mobility.

The short answer

The companies in aerospace, defence and space build aircraft, drones and satellites, and the software that flies and maintains them. Their products are the aircraft and engines, the cabin, the avionics and the defence systems, drones and autonomous defence, imaging satellites and the tracking of what is in orbit, and the records, manuals and simulators used to fly and maintain aircraft. Hiring here is small. Boeing, a large aircraft maker, hires the most, with the avionics and aircraft-systems maker Collins Aerospace, the jet-engine maker GE Aerospace and the Indian satellite and drone start-ups, like GalaxEye, Pixxel and NewSpace Research and Technologies, behind. Aircraft, drones and satellites run on software inside them, so embedded firmware engineers are by far the largest group, about five times as common here as at a typical product company. ML engineers for imagery and engine data are well above their usual weight too. Java, cloud and GenAI engineers are less common than usual. Hiring held level through 2026, and the door for juniors is wider than average.

Who gets hired, and why

Embedded firmware engineers. Flight computers, avionics, drones and satellites all run on software inside them, and it must not fail. Firmware engineers write it in C and C++ on RTOS and VxWorks, embedded Linux and ARM, with device drivers, bootloaders and CAN bus. Collins Aerospace hires the most, followed by Boeing and the Indian drone and defence companies, like NewSpace Research and Technologies and TelebortiX. Firmware engineers are about five times as common here as at a typical product company, and they take the most juniors here.

Test engineers. Boeing and the aviation-software company Acron Aviation hire testers, in Python and Java with Selenium and Playwright, and some on embedded testing. Testers are a little below their usual weight.

Java full-stack engineers. Boeing builds its engineering and service applications in Java with Spring Boot, almost always full-stack with Angular or React. Java is less common here than at most product companies, and it is hired with experience.

Generalist software engineers in aerospace, defence and space. Boeing and the satellite-imaging start-up GalaxEye hire engineers under a plain software engineer title, mostly in Python. They are above their usual weight, and they take juniors.

ML engineers. GE Aerospace and Boeing hire ML engineers who build models on engine data, documents and images, in Python with computer vision, image processing and language models. They are several times as common here as at a typical product company, and they take juniors readily.

C/C++ systems engineers. The satellite start-ups, like GalaxEye, Pixxel and Digantara, hire C/C++ systems engineers to work on the satellite's computers and ground systems, on embedded Linux. They are below their usual weight overall.

GenAI engineers. The defence-autonomy company Shield AI and Boeing hire a few GenAI engineers, in Python with LangChain and LangGraph. GenAI is less common here than at most product companies.

Also present. Frontend engineers at Boeing, cloud and data engineers at the in-flight entertainment maker Panasonic Avionics, Python engineers at the engine makers, like Pratt & Whitney and GE Aerospace, and the satellite start-up Pixxel, .NET engineers at the aircraft-maintenance software company Veryon, Node engineers at the drone-software company FlytBase, generalist software engineers at Boeing, satellite design engineers, and a few VLSI engineers.

Rare here. Mobile, Go and SAP work barely appear.

The skills that set Aerospace, defence and space apart

Software that flies

C and C++ on RTOS and VxWorks, with embedded Linux, ARM and bootloaders.

The aircraft's network

CAN bus, SPI, I2C and UART, in the firmware postings.

Seeing from above

Python with computer vision and image processing, in the ML postings.

The engineering application

Java with Spring Boot under Angular or React, at Boeing.

What is changing

These readings follow the record quarter by quarter, from October to December 2025, the third quarter of the financial year 2025-26, to July to September 2026, the second quarter of 2026-27. Hiring here is small, so a longer record will show whether they last.

Hiring held level

Openings were almost the same in every quarter. They did not join the product-industry rise in early 2026, and they did not fall with it between July and September, so this Industry Vertical's share of hiring grew again at the end of the record.

AI is behind

AI work was a smaller share of hiring here than across product companies in every quarter, and the gap widened between July and September 2026.

Persistently open roles

Far fewer jobs here are persistently open than across product companies.

Firmware and Java jobs fill quickly, posted again far less often than the same roles elsewhere. The skills that turn up most often in the jobs that do stay open are VxWorks and CAN bus.

Collins Aerospace is regularly hiring, keeping many of its jobs open again and again. Boeing does so rarely.

How long they stay open. When a job is posted again, its first and last postings are typically about three weeks apart, and rarely more than two months.

Where in the Industry Vertical the work is

Market Segment 39.1

Aircraft and aerospace systems makers hires more than all the others together. The airframers and the engines hires firmware, Java, ML and test engineers and generalist software engineers in aerospace, defence and space at Boeing, Collins Aerospace and GE Aerospace, and The cabin, the electronics and the defence systems hires cloud, data and firmware engineers at Panasonic Avionics and the electronics suppliers, like Rohde & Schwarz Australia and Centum Electronics.

Market Segment 39.2

Drones and defence tech is mostly firmware engineers. Drones and their software hires them at the Indian drone and defence companies and Shield AI, with a few GenAI and Node engineers, and Radios, radar, the sea and the smaller makers hires firmware engineers too. It is among the most open corners for juniors.

Market Segment 39.3

Earth observation and space surveillance hires firmware, C/C++, general software and satellite design engineers at the satellite-imaging and space-tracking start-ups in Bengaluru. It is open to juniors.

Market Segment 39.4

Aviation maintenance (MRO) and flight operations software hires a few test and .NET engineers at Acron Aviation and Veryon.

Some companies listed here have their main home elsewhere. They are Viasat and Silvus Technologies (Market Segment 1.5, in Industry Vertical 1, Networking and telecom), with a few smaller names. Their hiring is described where they live, not here.

Bengaluru has almost all the work, through Boeing, Collins Aerospace, the satellite start-ups and GE Aerospace. Pune appears through Panasonic Avionics and FlytBase, Delhi NCR through Shield AI and the drone makers, like TelebortiX and Optiemus Unmanned Systems, and Hyderabad and Chennai through drone, defence and aviation-software companies, like Constelli, Veryon and Big Bang Boom Solutions.

The door

Entry and junior hiring is above the average for product companies, and staff-level hiring is about average.

Firmware takes the most juniors, and ML and Python roles take them most readily in proportion.

GE Aerospace and Collins Aerospace take the most juniors, with the satellite and drone start-ups. Drones and satellites are the most open corners.

Java and C/C++ systems roles are hired with experience.

In one line

If you write firmware in C or C++ for things that fly, aerospace, defence and space is a small but steady destination in Bengaluru, and India's drone and satellite start-ups are among its most open doors.

Terms used on this page

Avionics

are the electronic systems of an aircraft, from flight controls and navigation to communication.

RTOS

, a real-time operating system, is an operating system that guarantees a response within a fixed time, and VxWorks is one widely used in aircraft and defence systems.

CAN bus

is the network over which an aircraft's or vehicle's control units send data to each other.

Earth observation

is the imaging of the Earth from satellites, used for farming, mapping, defence and disaster response.

Back to the story

This page reads the openings. The story of the companies is on Aerospace, defence and space.