Per-MW pricing, regional variance, and cost drivers for owners scoping hyperscale & AI builds.
Salary benchmarks across the 14 mission-critical disciplines.
Retained and direct-hire search for the engineers who design, build, and qualify the hardware: RF, propulsion, avionics, GNC, power electronics, FPGA, thermal, structures, systems, and test — for space, defense-tech, and advanced-manufacturing product teams. Product engineering, not construction. From the first hardware engineer on a program to the chief engineer who signs off on it.
iRecruit.co runs aerospace and defense engineering search as the product-engineering arm of its aerospace and defense practice: direct-hire searches at 20% of first-year base, retained searches at 30%, every candidate screened on the hardware they have designed, built, and qualified. We are building candidate density in this market ahead of demand — mapping the engineers before the program needs them.
Typical cadence for individual-contributor and lead roles; chief engineer, director, and cleared-program searches scoped individually.
Hardware and systems disciplines across launch, satellite, missile, UAS, and defense electronics programs, plus the manufacturing-adjacent engineering that gets a design to rate. Each role links to its hiring guide:
Board-level design, schematic capture and layout, bring-up and debug for flight and ground electronics.
Antennas, front ends, link budgets, radar and comms payloads from HF through mmWave.
Liquid, solid, and electric propulsion: combustion devices, turbomachinery, feed systems, hot-fire test.
Flight computers, sensor buses, DO-178C and DO-254 development, integration and HIL test.
Structures, mechanisms, enclosures, and GD&T-driven design for manufacture in CAD.
FEA, loads and margins, fatigue and fracture, qualification by analysis and test correlation.
Guidance, navigation and control: estimation, control law design, simulation, and flight software handoff.
Converters, motor drives, battery and power-distribution design for flight and vehicle systems.
RTL design and verification, signal-processing pipelines, timing closure on rad-tolerant and defense parts.
Thermal analysis and control for spacecraft, launch vehicles, and dense electronics; CFD and test correlation.
Requirements, architecture, interfaces, and verification across the program; MBSE and mission assurance.
Qualification and acceptance campaigns, environmental test, range and flight test planning and data.
Test stands, fixtures, automation, and data systems for production and development test.
Harnessing, power distribution, EMI/EMC, and electrical integration across the vehicle or system.
Fluids, mechanisms, tooling, and manufacturing-engineering support from prototype to production.
Plant, production, quality, and program leadership for the same programs run through our sector practices.
Four stages, run the same way whether the role is direct hire or retained — the difference is exclusivity and how deep the research goes, not the screening standard.
A working session with the engineering lead, not just HR: the subsystem, the tools, must-haves versus trainables, the compensation band, and whether the role requires a U.S. person or an active clearance. Signed off before any outreach.
We name the engineers who have worked comparable hardware — the same frequency band, propellant, bus, or part family — at primes, new-space and defense-tech companies, labs, and suppliers, and approach them directly.
Each candidate is screened on what they shipped and what broke. ITAR U.S.-person status is confirmed, and for cleared roles, clearance level, currency, and investigation date are verified before the shortlist goes out.
We schedule technical panels and design reviews, run structured debriefs, take references from program peers, structure the offer against the band, and handle the counteroffer through to a protected start date.
Generalist engineering recruiters match keywords; aerospace and defense hiring managers need someone who can tell a candidate who has closed timing on a rad-tolerant FPGA from one who has only read about it. We build the search around four things:
Screens run in the discipline’s own terms — link margin, Isp and chamber pressure, DO-178C level, Kalman filter tuning, GaN switching losses, timing closure, thermal margin, verification cross-reference matrices — so a plausible resume and a deliverable engineer separate in one call.
Export-controlled and cleared roles fail late when eligibility is assumed. U.S.-person status is confirmed at first contact; clearance level, currency, and investigation date are verified before a finalist meets your team, and facility-clearance context is understood on your side.
Offers are structured against published aerospace and defense bands by discipline and level, not a generic engineering salary, so the offer lands the first time and the counteroffer conversation is anticipated.
Reindustrialization and defense-tech funding have new programs competing for a fixed pool of hardware engineers who are employed and off-market. We are assembling that network discipline by discipline — mapped by research and direct approach, not job posts.
Published market bands by discipline and level, with the notes on how aerospace and defense compensation differs from general engineering:
iRecruit.co runs two models. Direct hire is 20% of first-year base salary, paid on placement with no upfront fee. Retained search is 30% of first-year base salary, paid in thirds at engagement, shortlist, and placement, and the search is exclusive. Both carry a replacement guarantee and are scoped and confirmed in writing before the search launches.
Retained fits when the role is confidential, anchors a program, or sits in a discipline where the qualified pool is small and mostly off-market — propulsion, GNC, rad-tolerant FPGA, cleared systems roles. Direct hire fits when the role can run alongside your own sourcing and you want to pay only on placement. The screening standard is the same in both; retained buys exclusivity, deeper research, and a committed timeline.
As process steps, not as a checkbox at the end. During calibration we confirm whether the role requires a U.S. person under ITAR or an active clearance and at what level. U.S.-person status is confirmed at first contact with every candidate. For cleared roles, clearance level, currency, and investigation date are verified before the shortlist is presented, so no finalist is disqualified late for eligibility.
Hardware, RF, propulsion, avionics, mechanical design, structural analysis, GNC, power electronics, FPGA, thermal, systems, and test and evaluation engineers, plus test, electrical, and mechanical engineers on the manufacturing side of the same programs — from individual contributor through lead, principal, and chief engineer. These are product-engineering searches for space, defense-tech, and advanced-manufacturing teams; construction roles for the plants themselves run through our aerospace and defense manufacturing practice.
A 30-minute conversation about the role — discipline, program, compensation band, ITAR or clearance requirements, direct hire or retained. Scope and pricing in writing after the call.
iRecruit.co is building a network of hardware, RF, propulsion, avionics, GNC, FPGA, systems, and test engineers for space, defense-tech, and advanced-manufacturing programs. Conversations are confidential — nothing moves without your say-so.
