About the project.

Space and defence job postings are scattered across dozens of separate career pages, each with its own search, filters and quirks. DS[Careers] pulls the open roles from all of them into one board, so you can search, filter and compare in one place instead of checking each company by hand.

As a European citizen myself, I am ofcourse strongly interested in our joint development. The continent, especially the EU has a unique position in the defence and space sectors. Work visas, security clearance requirements, and export-control rules often favour hiring within a shared economic or defence bloc. Taken as a whole, Europe has real advantages here: easier cross-border movement for EU/EEA nationals, a growing base of joint defence programmes, and companies, customers and suppliers that increasingly work across borders rather than within just one country and a growing demand for sovereignty faciliting innovation. This project's aim is to match talent with roles inside that European context specifically, not to rank Europe above anywhere else. Nothing is hidden: every country a tracked company publishes listings for is still refreshed and searchable; Europe is just the starting lens, not the only one. Ofcourse we acknowledge Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova as part of continental Europe geographically — they're on the map and one filter away too, yet still we have to consider the current geopolitical situation and the fact that many of the companies tracked here are not allowed to do business with those countries. The project is open to expanding coverage to other regions in the future, but for now, this part of Europe is the focus.

A scheduled refresh checks each company's public career page or applicant tracking system, compares what it finds against what we saw last time, and records what was added, what disappeared, and what's still open. That comparison is also what powers the Statistics page — there's no separate tracking system behind it, just the history of each refresh.

Experience level is estimated from each listing's own text where it isn't stated outright. That text is kept while a role is open, so a full listing opens instantly and nothing is fetched from the employer while you browse; it is dropped a month after the role closes.

A solo portfolio project, built end to end by John and Claude . That includes everything regarding the refresh and diffing pipeline, database and the UI design itself.

A major source of inspiration for this project, and of many of the companies tracked here, is the European Space Industry Map by European Spaceflight. Thank you for mapping the European space sector so thoroughly and always keeping us up to date with all the latest developments in the industry!

If you are even further interested in current space developments and the technology behind them, there is also Downlink on Substack, a newsletter on space entrepreneurship with a focus on Earth observation companies across the EU.

And while researching this project we came across Space-Careers, which does something similar: a job portal for the space industry aimed at international, English-speaking job seekers. If DS[Careers] doesn't have what you are looking for, it is well worth a look as an alternative.

Maybe more companies, other industries, and coverage for career sites beyond the current sources — plus a closer look at region-level filtering on the map. The Company Register and Statistics pages will grow alongside the list of companies tracked. Ideas welcome, just shoot info.dscareers@proton.me.