Who hires in AI, robotics, aerospace and space, and where
A map of the 32 companies on our jobs board by field and city. Southern California and the Bay Area dominate. Here's the rest.
Our jobs board now tracks 32 employers whose public job boards we can read: 11 space companies, 5 in aviation and propulsion, 5 AI labs and 11 robotics and autonomy companies. When we pulled them on Oct. 21, SpaceX alone listed about 2,780 openings, Rocket Lab about 580 and Relativity about 380. Smaller companies range from a dozen to a couple hundred. Here’s where the work sits, from the locations those companies list on their postings.
Los Angeles and Long Beach. The densest space cluster on our list. Relativity, Rocket Lab and Vast post heavily from Long Beach. Varda is in El Segundo, Inversion in Playa Vista, Northwood in Torrance, SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne. Skyryse is in El Segundo, and Hermeus posts roles in Los Angeles as well as Atlanta.
San Francisco Bay Area. The AI and robotics center. Anthropic, OpenAI, Physical Intelligence and Astranis post mainly in San Francisco. Zipline is in South San Francisco, Waymo and Nuro in Mountain View, Figure AI and Muon Space in San Jose, 1X in San Carlos, Dexterity in Redwood City, Skydio in San Mateo, and Agility lists Fremont.
Texas. SpaceX’s McGregor test site, plus Apptronik and Boom Supersonic in Austin.
Colorado. Ursa Major in Berthoud and Longmont, and ispace’s U.S. office in Englewood. Colorado also hosts much of the space industry that doesn’t publish on the three job-board systems we read, so treat our count there as low.
Elsewhere. Merlin is in Boston, Formic in Chicago, Rocket Lab has roles at Wallops Island in Virginia, and both Rocket Lab and Relativity post at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. Abroad, ispace hires in Tokyo, Planet in Berlin, and the AI labs in London and Dublin.
Remote work exists but is thin for hardware. Around one in eight roles on our sampled board is tagged remote, mostly at AI labs and in software. Anything touching hardware almost always means being on site. Use the remote filter to see the current list.
What’s missing: Blue Origin, Firefly, Intuitive Machines, Astrobotic, Axiom, Astrolab and Lunar Outpost run job systems we can’t read automatically yet. Several of them are central to NASA’s lunar plans; Astrolab and Lunar Outpost are building the Moon Base crew rovers. Check their careers pages directly.
Our view: if you can move, Long Beach to El Segundo for space and San Francisco to San Jose for AI and robotics are where the density is. If you can’t, aim at remote software roles and use them to build the track record that makes relocation worth a company’s while.
What would change this map: a large new site from one of the big employers outside these clusters. We’ll update the page when the postings show it.
Not affiliated with NASA, SpaceX or any agency or company mentioned. Not investment advice. Disclaimer.