The third national Space Sector Skills Survey has launched to give all space sector employers across the UK the chance to tell us about the challenges they are facing with securing the right workforce they need.
Baroness Lloyd, Minister for Space, Cyber and Regulatory Reform said:
“Space has never been more critical to the UK economy, and we have set out our intentions and priorities for the sector, backed by £7.8b of investment, in the recently published UK Space Strategy. However, I recognise that all space ambition, activity, and success is underpinned by its workforce and having the right people with the right skills.
The improved and expanded 2026 Space Sector Skills Survey is a critical opportunity for you to help us to identify space workforce issues and their causes. The data and insights that will be published will shape policies and help inform both government led and sector led activity.
I strongly urge all UK space sector organisations to complete the survey, share your valuable insights, and help us to support the space sector of the future.”
If we take a moment to think about what is the most important part of a space endeavour, we could think of a lot of elements - securing funding, successfully making technologies that probably don’t exist yet, gaining licenses, generating revenue, or successfully getting off the launch pad and ensuring everything works when we reach the destination.
But arguably the most important factor is the people making it happen. All of those important steps to success need the right people first - including those who dream up bold innovative ideas, have specialist skills to design and build new technologies, those who possess business development and communication skills, or those with scientific research and analytical skills - and we are only scratching the surface of the breadth of skills and roles needed in the space sector.
In 2020, we first surveyed the sector in partnership with BMG Research, and the survey set out to quantify and provide a first national picture of challenges and issues being discussed locally.
96 space companies participated and provided a baseline of insights in the published report. Broadly we learned that:
The supply of a skilled workforce had not kept up with growth. Wider skills and experience were needed on top of graduate qualifications. Software skills especially were being lost to other sectors. There was a lack of conversion courses, internal training and routes from A Levels. A new early entrant scheme or training programme was needed.The report provided the evidence base to secure funding and a new and expanded education and skills programme, which delivered, among other things, a high impacting school and social learning engagement programme to showcase space careers, an expansion on the already successful space internship programme that had already placed over 600 students, and the development of several new training programmes for over 5000 delegates.
To understand how best to target these new interventions, we surveyed the sector again in 2023, in partnership with the Space Skills Alliance. The published report provided an updated and expanded view with 218 organisations participating, including representation from academia (~9%) this time, and enabled us to engage with the space sector to agree the top priority skills areas to target.
We saw that the main challenges were evolving and, in some areas, increasing:
95% of organisations were experiencing skills challenges (up 28%) 80% faced recruitment difficulties (up 19%) 61% reported skills gaps in job applicants Software, data and system engineering were the most challenging to recruitThese findings have most recently supported and evidenced the skills and workforce actions set out in the 2026 UK Space Strategy, as part of an expanded focus on the space ecosystem, which aims to support the environment for UK space companies to grow and succeed.
But the data is now three years old, and the sector continues to evolve rapidly. At the same time, we are developing skills policies for space, and wider government is developing policies for skills more broadly. This new set of space skills surveys will support these developments directly, starting in 2026 and monitoring regularly with follow ups in 2028 and 2030 to provide more agile robust data.
Dr Craig Brown, UK Space Agency's Deputy Director for Space Ecosystem said:
“For the UK space sector to keep growing, companies need access to the right people, with the right skills, at the right time. That is one of the clearest bottlenecks employers tell us they face: not a lack of ambition or opportunity, but the challenge of finding, developing and retaining the skilled workforce needed to scale. The Space Sector Skills Survey gives us the evidence we need to understand where those pressures are greatest, what is driving them, and how government and the sector can work together to unlock growth across the UK space economy.”
What is new in the 2026 Space Skills Survey?IFF Research are independently undertaking the survey, which has been updated and expanded to:
Include questions tailored for both industry and academia. Focus on sites rather than organisations to give a better regional picture. Include wider questioning on the impacts of government policy. Provide more opportunity for describing issues.The survey is open to all space employers in the UK, and we need as many UK space organisations as possible to participate to give the best possible picture of workforce issues – this is your opportunity to tell us about the problems you are experiencing. It should take no more than 15mins to complete.
https://space.blog.gov.uk/2026/10/14/take-part-in-the-2026-space-sector-skills-survey/
seen at 11:03, 14 October in UK Space Agency blog.