At a glance
- Client
- DCUBED — space hardware manufacturer, Munich area
- Model
- Embedded recruitment — 3 full-time recruiters
- Scope
- Active sourcing, interviewing, evaluation
- Functions
- Production · Process · Quality · Mechanical · AIT
- Status
- Ongoing mandate
The challenge
The challenge.
DCUBED makes release actuators, deployables and solar arrays — hardware that has to work the first time, in orbit, with no chance of a service call. Growing from a component supplier into a volume manufacturer meant standing up a full production organisation: shopfloor supervision, process and industrial engineering, supplier and product-assurance quality, mechanical and thermal design, AIT and test infrastructure.
Two things made that hard. First, the pool of engineers in Germany with genuine flight-hardware experience is small and largely employed by primes and established suppliers. Second, the roles span very different labour markets — a shopfloor supervisor, a supplier quality engineer and a senior mechanical engineer are three separate searches with three separate candidate populations, and they were all needed at once.
The engagement
How we ran it.
Rather than running a series of contingent searches, we embedded a team of three full-time recruiters dedicated exclusively to DCUBED. They work inside the company's process and under its employer brand: active sourcing, first-round interviews, technical pre-evaluation with the hiring managers, and pipeline reporting against the hiring plan.
Sourcing runs on two tracks. Track one is the space sector itself — primes, agencies, established suppliers and the university programmes that feed them. Track two is deliberately adjacent: semiconductor equipment, medical devices, automotive validation and precision machine building, where engineers are trained in exactly the tolerance discipline and qualification documentation that flight hardware demands, and where the space mission is a genuine pull factor.
Roles hired
What we search for.
Production & shopfloor
Production managers for the solar array and actuator lines, shopfloor supervisors, production and automation technicians, and maintenance and facility management.
Process, industrial & manufacturing engineering
Process engineers for the solar array line, industrial engineers on the actuator side, and AIT and test infrastructure engineers building the qualification capability.
Quality & product assurance
Head of Quality for actuators, supplier quality engineers, and product assurance engineers working to space-sector documentation standards.
Mechanical & R&D engineering
Senior mechanical and mechanisms engineers for solar arrays, senior thermal engineering, R&D engineers on the actuator product line, and technical project management.
Candidate landscape
Candidate landscape.
The Munich space and hardware cluster
Munich is the strongest space cluster in Germany, but it is also crowded: primes, research institutes and a growing set of NewSpace companies compete for the same engineers, and the technician layer is contested by the wider Bavarian manufacturing base.
Adjacent industries as the real pool
Most of the qualified population sits outside space. Semiconductor equipment, medtech and precision machine building produce engineers who transfer well; the gap is space-specific standards, which strong candidates close quickly with internal support.
Relocation and language
Shopfloor and technician roles are effectively local and often need working German. Senior engineering roles open up considerably once relocation from elsewhere in the EU is on the table, so we qualify language level, notice period and family situation before introducing anyone.
How we ran it
Process.
- Phase 1
Embed & calibrate
Recruiters onboarded into DCUBED's tooling and process, hiring plan prioritised, scorecards agreed per role family, target-company lists signed off with the hiring managers.
- Phase 2
Active sourcing at volume
Outbound across the space pool and the adjacent industrial pool, structured screening interviews, technical pre-evaluation before any hiring-manager time is spent.
- Ongoing
Run the funnel
Weekly pipeline review against the plan, feedback loops into the brief where the market disagrees with the spec, and offer support through to signature.
The outcome
Where it stands.
The engagement is live and ongoing. Three full-time recruiters currently run DCUBED's hiring across production, process, quality, mechanical and AIT roles, with the open vacancies published on DCUBED's own careers board.
The structural lesson is one every NewSpace company eventually meets: the hiring plan is bigger than the space-experienced talent pool, so the search has to reach into adjacent industries and be run by people who are inside your business full-time, not passing through.
FAQ
FAQ.
- Why embedded recruitment rather than contingent search here?
- Because the hiring plan runs across many roles in parallel and depends on employer-brand storytelling. Embedded recruiters learn the product, the standards and the hiring managers once, then apply that across every role — contingent search would repeat that learning curve per vacancy and compete against itself.
- How many recruiters does an engagement like this need?
- Three full-time recruiters for a hiring plan of this size. The right number depends on parallel open roles, seniority mix and how much of the interviewing you want the recruiters to own.
- Do you only recruit candidates with space experience?
- No, and that is the point. We run space and adjacent-industry sourcing in parallel, screening the adjacent pool for tolerance discipline, qualification documentation and design-for-test rigour.
- Can you run a similar engagement for our hardware company?
- Yes. Send us your hiring plan for the next twelve months and we will come back with a view on how many roles are findable locally, which need a wider net, and what recruiter capacity that implies.
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