Scotland’s culture of creativity, innovation and research is built on collaboration. When you work in Scotland, you join a connected space community offering unique opportunities to work across industry and academia. 

You’ll also benefit from active government support, funding, and progressive policies. These include 2021 spaceflight regulations that allow the UK to be the first European country to launch spacecraft and satellites from home soil. 

When it comes to advancing your space career in Scotland, the opportunities span the entire sector. You can work in dynamic areas like fundamental and applied research, system design and spacecraft manufacture, launch and operations, and data processing and service provision. 

You can also take your career further in related fields like manufacturing and aerospace and, engineering (particularly software engineering). Or you can transfer your skills to other thriving specialisms like AI and Data. 

Scotland’s space strategy plans to make Scotland the best place on earth to build a space business. It’s vision for 2030 is to build a workforce five times the size with a focus on diversity and increased participation.

Collaboration and coalition are at the heart of making this happen. Partners in industry, academia, and government have come together to develop a diverse space ecosystem where businesses and careers can thrive.

Scotland’s fast-growing space sector is built on broad expertise and experience in defence, electronics, aerospace, geospatial science, geophysics, subsea oil, and gas engineering.

Just as importantly, steady funding and investment continues to increase job opportunities in exciting projects. Examples include:

• A £29 million investment in developing launch operations from Scotland.
• £10.9 million from the UK government to invest in five Scottish projects, including three smaller kick starter ventures.

The UK is also one of the founding members of the European Space Agency (ESA). This broadens your scope to be part of space programmes and activities throughout Europe and beyond.

Scotland’s outstanding record of industry and academic engagement is supported by 19 world-class universities and higher education institutions. From propulsion and space radiation to orbital dynamics and advanced materials, Scotland is the place to study for and build a career in space innovation.

Industries, innovation centres and universities work together in Scotland in a highly collaborative environment. Projects include: 

• Space Scotland opens in a new window – the official home of Scotland’s space sector, dedicated to promoting collaboration and commercial opportunities 
• The replacement Hubble telescope – James Webb Space Telescope opens in a new window – was developed with the expertise of Edinburgh’s UK Astronomy Technology Centre opens in a new window – a European Space Agency opens in a new window and UK Space Agency opens in a new window incubator 
• University of Glasgow opens in a new window is contributing to the Europe-wide Laser Interferometer Space Antennaopens in a new window (LISA) project, the first ever space-based gravitational wave observatory, expected to launch in 2034 
• University of Dundee's Space Technology Centreexternal link which will open in a new window opens in a new window is involved in leading research including data handling onboard of spacecraft, planetary lander technology and satellite data reception 
• The University of Edinburgh and Ecometrica are involved in Forests 2020 - a satellite data project to help protect and restore up to 300 million hectares of tropical forests 
• Higgs Centre for Innovation opens in a new window at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh is a business-focused facility that supports start-ups and SMEs working in the satellite, space, and data-intensive sectors

Other world-class R&D work is taking place at the University of Edinburgh. Its Geosciences School, School of Informatics, and the Bayes Centre are carrying out research in areas ranging from data modelling to AI to computational linguistics.