Figure 1: A student team working around a CubeSat payload
"We can't afford to train a graduate. We need someone who can hit the ground running"
Sound familiar? It's one of the most common reasons space SMEs give for only hiring experienced people. But look at the market you're hiring into.
The UK space sector is worth £18.6bn and aims to be a leading exporter by 2030. Yet a Space Skills Alliance report for the UK Space Agency found:
📊 52% of space organisations have skills gaps
📊 83% of those hiring struggled to recruit
Waiting for the perfect experienced hire costs time too: months of vacancies, recruiter fees, and a bidding war with cash-rich competitors.
Today's graduates arrive with skills your team may not have yet:
🤖 AI and machine learning, often applied to satellite imagery or sensor data during their degree
🔄 Concurrent engineering. Many have designed full missions with every subsystem developed in parallel
🛰️ Hands-on hardware, from CubeSat and student rocketry projects to test campaigns
📊 Data and digital tools they can put to work straight away
That's not a training burden. That's capability you'd otherwise have to buy in or learn yourself.
"But we still don't have time to train them."
You don't have to start from scratch:
✅ Try before you hire. A student project or summer internship means that, by the time they join, they already know your people, your product and how you work.
✅ They learn fast. SMEs regularly report that graduates absorb knowledge quickly and really thrive when given a project to own.
✅ Experienced hires need onboarding too, and they often bring habits from elsewhere that you have to undo.
What SMEs that have hired graduates say:
💡 Fresh ideas and new ways of working
⏱️ Owners freed up to work on the business, not just in it
📈 89% of businesses in one placement survey reported a positive impact on performance
🔁 Once they've hired one graduate, they're more likely to hire another
The question isn't whether you can afford the time to take on a graduate. It's whether you can afford to miss out on new talent!
Getting started:
- Partner with one or two local universities
- Offer a student degree project. SpaceProjects.uk can help you scope it and protect your IP
- Run a paid summer internship as a working interview for both sides (last year DSIT sponsored these so they were free to SMEs)
- Lead with your pitch: real responsibility, variety, and direct access to leadership
Useful links:
The SME Internship Scheme | Careers Service | University of Bristol
Internship Funding | Career Ready
Change 100 internships | Leonard Cheshire
Turing Scheme: apply for funding for international placements - GOV.UK
How to Get Turing Scheme Funding for Your Internship Abroad (2026 Guide) | Internship Abroad