1. Skills – What employers want
Kathie Bowden,
National Point of Contact, Skills and Career Development,
UK Space Agency and the Institute for Environmental Analytics
February 2016
4. Organisation
UPSTREAM
Designing, building and managing
spacecraft such as satellites
Companies tended to:
• Be larger
• Have graduate training programmes
• Recruit from universities or from other
sectors
But increasingly smaller companies who:
• Recruit direct and don’t do milk round
• Look for imaginative self starters
Job requirements:
• Good quality, numerate, first degree
e.g. engineering (particularly
mechanical or electrical), computer
science, physics etc
• Specialised Masters degree
• In some cases apprenticeships are
offered
Starting Salaries circa £27K
DOWNSTREAM OR SPACE ENABLED
Exploiting space-derived data and providing
services or products e.g. weather
forecasting, risk management
Employers tend to:
• Be smaller divisions of big companies or
SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises).
• Recruit direct. Occasionally interact
directly with universities
Job requirements:
• In most cases a first degree in the
subjects as for upstream or Earth or
Marine Sciences, Ecology, Geographical
and Environmental Sciences.
• Strong quantitative skills e.g data
management and modelling.
Starting Salaries circa £20-23K
6. Jobs in space!
Credit: ESA/Guus Schoonewille
Engineers - mechanical and electrical, and
technicians, to design and build spacecraft
and instruments.
Systems and software designers,
mathematicians – developing software to
control and monitor spacecraft, using space
data to model complex systems for
applications such as weather, navigation and
communications
7. Scientists, researchers and technical
specialists - in physics, geology, climatology,
biology and many more subjects, designing
experiments and using space data to learn more
about the Earth, ourselves and the Universe.
In companies using space - from agriculture to
resource exploration, disaster monitoring and risk
evaluation, environmental protection to
telecommunications, using physical sciences,
maths and engineering.
Jobs in space!
8. • Being a team player
• Languages
• Problem solving
• Communicating professionally
• Balancing Budgets
• Numeracy and basic statistics
What skills are important?
•Data Management and Modelling
•Understanding risk and
uncertainty
• Catastrophe Modelling
9. Skills in short
supply!
There are identified shortages of people with the
following skills:
•Cyber Security
•Digital Signal Processing (including radar processing and
engineering)
•Radio-frequency Engineering
•Antenna Design
•GNSS understanding, development and processing
Note these skills are also in short supply in other
sectors and are therefore HIGHLY TRANSFERABLE!
10. How do I gain additional skills?
Internships / work experience
Apply directly to a company or take advantage of schemes such as the Space Placements
in Industry Network (SPIN):
https://sa.catapult.org.uk/space-internship-network-spin-scheme
Further Links can be found at
http://www.ukspace.org/what-we-do/careers/
Years in Industry (if in a degree programme):
http://www.etrust.org.uk/year_in_industry.cfm
Short course or MSc run by Higher Education Institutes (useful if already in
employment)
Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) https://www.futurelearn.com
Ensure you take appropriate modules whilst still at University!
11. Other top tips for a space sector career
1. Join a space group or Society such as:
• Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (UKSEDS) - the
world’s largest space enthusiast organisation for both school and
university students. In the UK: ukseds.org/
• British Interplanetary Society: www.bis-spaceflight.com/
• Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Society: www.rspsoc.org.uk
• Royal Aeronautical Society: www.aerosociety.com
2. Learn to Network – go out and meet people from companies at
conferences and exhibitions.
3. The soft skills that make you good at your subject will also be important
to an employer – use them!
4. Employers are interested in what else you do with your life, and where
your passions lie.
12. For UK companies involved in the space sector – check out members
of UK Space, British Association of Remote Sensing Companies
and corporate members of appropriate societies – contact
information can also be found in the Space Directory
13. UK Space Agency
+44 (0)207 215 5000
info@ukspaceagency.bis.gsi.gov.uk
@spacegovuk
www.gov.uk/ukspaceagency
www.ukspacedirectory.com
Notas del editor
Summarise talk:
Swift overview of UK in space recognising that the audience is the ‘initiated’ and that many speakers today have already more than covered the basics.
Sector organisation and jobs balance
Qualifications and skills required by industry and described by them in both the IGS Strategy and recent survey of employers
Other tips for a career in space.
Many of you have asked me what the UK Space Agency does – we’re the government agency responsible for civil space policy and through which the UK contributes as an ESA member. Responsible for a large element (but not all) of UK Government funding.
Now there are approx. 50 spacecraft in orbit with UK government funding and approx. 50 in development. These are being used to…
Overview of sector as it is and how it is growing (~7.3 % at last Size and Health of the UK Space Industry report – October 2014)
Downstream dominates at £10.1bn BUT a cautionary comment – a big part of that is SKY!
IGS Restack target of 100,000 more jobs supported and a sector worth £14.2 billion with a UK share of the global market of 10%.
Gender balance, whilst it’s not perfect, I can say that women have every much as good a chance of being taken on as men.
I’ve been asked today about the opportunities for PhDs – many companies do employ lots of PHDs BUT can I temper your enthusiasm? As with any new employee your usefulness will all depend on how applicable your skill set is to the business, and how much additional training (or upskilling) you’ll need before you become useful! Demonstrating that is up to you.
Cannot mention jobs in space without mentioning Tim Peake.
Tim is the first British ESA astronaut and is on a mission to the ISS for 6 months. He applied for the role (like many before him) having trained through the military, and remains an Army Reservist.
Obviously, becoming an astronaut is rare (~500 astronauts in total) but there are many 1,000s of different roles which support each astronaut flight, be it astronaut fitness and training, ground control or the engineers working on spacecraft such as ISS modules.
Investment by the UK Space Agency in Europe’s space programme secures a strong return resulting in orders for British businesses and subsequent jobs in fields ranging from satellite communications to Mars rovers and nuclear space batteries to weather satellites.
The UK also joined the European Life and Physical Sciences Programme (ELIPS) programme. A programme to exploit the unique environment of space for fundamental and applied science in health, biology, materials and physics. Benefits of joining this programme include insights into the human ageing process and new lightweight materials for jet engines. This will generate an array of jobs in the UK.
And there are currently 34,300 people working directly in the space sector in the UK alone, with 72,000 other jobs supported and a predicted increase in jobs by 100,000 by 2030.
People who work in the space sector work in university research departments, government organisations and in the private sector companies, in large and small organisations (SMEs)
These jobs will include engineers, researchers of all kinds, Technicians, Systems and software experts.
Image 2 – MIRI in the vibration testing chamber.
Image 3 – engineers working on MetOp-A
Image 4 – a satellite undergoes the thermal chamber test
Image 5 – Software is developed for the Gaia mission
Image 1 – Developing a business plan
Image 2 - ESA's Navigation Facility, located at ESOC, Darmstadt, calculates and predicts highly accurate GPS, Galileo and GLONASS (Russian GPS) satellite orbits, in near-real time, every six hours, around the clock. These data are then used to improve GPS position accuracy, paving the way to even more sophisticated applications and scientific studies, such as large-scale climate monitoring and tracking of long-term changes in Earth’s geology.
Image 3 TIA: Peat spotter handheld device for collecting ground data – Rezatec – for ground support of peatland monitoring.
Image 4: Venturing out on the sea ice north of Greenland as part of the 2014 campaign to validate measurements from CryoSat. Keeping an eye out for polar bears, the ground team took measurements of snow depth and ice depth as well as detailing ice properties. Along with data acquired from the air, these measurements are compared with data from CryoSat to ensure it is delivering true information about Earth’s changing ice.
Besides the degrees and experience described above, employers often state they want the following skills.
These are especially important skills to have in the downstream and were found to be lacking in current graduates by employers contributing to the recent IGS Restack.
Or head to Future Morph’s space page:
http://www.futuremorph.org/my-future-finder/space/
FutureMorph’s space page: http://www.futuremorph.org/my-future-finder/space/
For 3 they will also be important to understanding and using the data derived from space.
To be blunt – you can be confident in the skills and knowledge you are learning, but don’t be arrogant! You will need to be a good team player, and that means getting on with people, listening and being able to put your point across.
Again these are just some of the UK space companies I’ve mentioned. Some of these, run graduate and/or apprenticeship schemes. In all cases enquiring with them directly or sending them a speculative CV may give you a clearer idea of what they require in a job applicant.
Keep in touch.
If you want to find out more about what the UK is doing in space, sign up for our news alerts and/or subscribe, for free, to our space:uk magazine: http://www.bis.gov.uk/ukspaceagency/publications. We also have a Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/spacegovuk
Follow @spacegovuk, @Space_Careers, on Twitter
Any further questions: info@ukspaceagency.bis.gsi.gov.uk
