The space industry is heating up with loads of funding pouring into the sector, with many possibilities for people to find new careers.

EVONA CEO Tom Kelly joins Wealth! for Yahoo Finance's Space Race: Investing in the Final Frontier series to give insight into the job market in the space sector, how to find work in the sector, and what it's paying.

"Electrical engineering, systems engineering, embedded software, mechanical design. You can see there the kind of depth of the seniority, but most of the positions are engineering and these are the sorts of salaries that you can expect if you come and work in the space industry," Kelly outlines. "So again, forget this kind of slow-moving industry purely about the government, probably a lower salary. This is new space, VC, private equity-backed... companies that are looking to do incredible things."

Catch up on Yahoo Finance's special coverage as part of this week's Space Race: Investing in the Final Frontier series.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Wealth!

This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video Transcript

Lots of kids grow up wanting to be astronauts.

But while very few people actually get to strap into a rocket and fly off to space, a lot of people work in the industry that makes it all happen.

So how do you find the right job for you in the space sector?

Joining me Now We've got Tom Kelly, who was the CE of Ivona, which is a staffing agency for the space industry.

Tom, great to have you here with us today.

A lot of people wanna go to space or at least be space touching somehow in some fashion or another.

What are some of the top ways and roles that are starting to open up in this industry?

Sure, yeah, yeah.

First of all, thanks a lot for for having me on the show.

Thanks a lot for doing the space week as well.

I think it's important to to really push out the message that the space industry is open for everybody.

Um, there is a bit of a narrative at the moment that it's all about the tourism, and that's actually a very small part of the industry.

Um, it's it is extremely broad so I think that you know the first.

The first key message is that the space industry is open for everybody.

Um, we've placed roles in everything that you could ever imagine from admin through marketing up to sales CEO, S and the industry is welcoming of people with skill sets from outside.

Um, but I think you know what 11 really really, really important thing to to mention as well is that space is very unique in its culture.

Um, I think it's derived from the fact that, um, most people think it's just rockets.

Um, in fact, it is a lot more than that.

But once you actually start to understand the sector, you realise that, and I believe it to do with the fact that most of it are working on technology that doesn't actually exist on Earth.

It people are humble, people are approachable.

People just want to do really, really well and really push things forward for humanity.

So the culture is fully, fully fully.

Um, you know, it's there's nothing else like it.

Um, as referenced on the slide there.

You know, engineering is obviously a huge part of it.

These are these are kind of normal skill sets that you would find.

So, um, electrical engineering systems, engineering, embedded software, Um, mechanical design.

You can see there the kind of the kind of depth of, uh, the seniority.

And but most of the positions are engineering, and these are the sorts of salaries that you can expect, Um, if you to come and work in the space industry.

So again, forget there's kind of slow moving industry purely about the government, Um, you know, probably a lower salary.

This is new space VC private equity backed sexy companies that are looking to do incredible things.

Um, some of the companies that that we've been to see are just are just just insane.

So as you can see there, the salaries are pretty much consistent with the tech sector.

Um, space is now, in fact, deep tech.

Um, it used to just be hardware.

And now it's really, really, really evolved, Um, in terms of, like, the key locations for the, um, in the US.

It's overwhelmingly west coast.

Uh, if you look across the investment into companies over the last four years, which, incidentally, really did peak in, uh, 2020.

Um it slowed down a little bit.

Um, in 2022 I think investors started to realise that they need to have a return on this very interesting tech.

And now it's found.

But it's it is predominantly west Coast.

Um, Colorado is the second, um, both those locations are traditional aerospace areas, but interestingly, with about 8% of the investment is Florida.

They have the rocket launches CS.

So with that in mind, Tom, sorry.

I just want to jump in here.

I mean, where are we seeing the most space jobs?

You mentioned some of the locations and then come to mind naturally for a lot of viewers, because those are bases where there have been a lot of government operations previously.

There are a lot of new private operations that are coming online, too.

And so where are you seeing the most of the positions in that kind of public versus private jousting?

Especially when there is overlap in some of those contracts for the industry?

Yeah, yeah, the There's definitely been a shift.

Um, there's been a shift from the primes.

So when we say primes going to NASA to Lockheed to Boeing, et cetera.

um, all bidding on the same work as other, much smaller companies.

But now the government are actually interested in providing these pieces of work to much smaller companies, we which, which is fantastic because it pushes the innovation.

It changes the way in which these companies look to work on, uh, longer term pieces of work.

Um, what we see is predominantly the contracts are are going to the VC backed, uh, or businesses at the moment.

Um, the poor growth areas that we've seen over the last few years has definitely been in earth Observation.

So what?

What we mean by that is effectively businesses who are are using space technology to monitor earth and then make actionable decisions off the back of that.

So I live in Florida.

Hurricane season is upon us.

We wouldn't look into those without all the technology from space.

Um, but space is is all around us.

It's absolutely everywhere.

Um, the flat out will soon be a smart desk.

You won't be able to do that without the technology from space.

The cell phone soon will be able to have perfect phone signals everywhere.

Not sure if we spent much time in the UK.

But that's incredibly useful.

I. I can imagine that That would save a lot of people.

Some, uh, some some pain, some agony of losing that reception for sure.

Tom, we We gotta leave things there on the day We're running short on time here in the show.

Would love to have you back, though.

And continue this conversation.

Very important.

One for sure.

Absolutely.

All right.

Thanks a lot.

Thanks so much, Tom.

Tom Kelly, Who is the Ivona CEO?