MILAN — The European Space Agency announced plans to hire approximately 520 new staff members starting in 2026, following decisions approved at ESA’s 342nd Council meeting earlier this month.
The recruitment will result in a net increase of about 400 staff, alongside the replacement of roughly 120 positions due to retirements.
The move will bring ESA’s total staff — excluding contractors — to around 3,400 employees. It will also allow the agency to extend the employment of personnel in key positions from the age of 63 to 66.
“We are both extending the staff that we have and widening the reach of our portfolio,” Marco Ferrazzani, ESA’s Director of Resources and Services, said during the press meeting that followed the Dec. 17-18 Council. Ferrazzani explained that ESA is consolidating its traditional workforce of space and ground-segment engineers and expanding into new professional profiles. That means looking for data scientists, IT specialists, project officers, business analysts and many others.
ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher also emphasized that “ESA is going through a major transformation to increase efficiency, so an increase in budget does not automatically translate into an increase in staff.”
Eligibility for ESA staff positions is limited to nationals of ESA member states, as well as associated or cooperating states, including Canada, Slovakia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus and Malta.
Recruitment is expected to take place throughout the year, although some hiring programs follow specific timelines, an ESA spokesperson told SpaceNews. Opportunities under the ESA Graduate Trainee Programme are published in February; the Junior Professional Programme in April or May; the Internship Programme in November; and the Research Fellowship Programme for the Science Programme usually launches its annual selection round at the end of August.
At this stage, ESA has not specified whether certain departments will see higher staffing needs than others.
All vacancies will be published on ESA’s recruitment website at jobs.esa.int.
