CCSDS, Not 'Space Protocols.' That One Line Determines If Project 11 Calls You.

What's Open at Project 11 — and What This Article Skips

Project 11 has three roles live on the Zero G Talent board this week: a Senior Backend Engineer in the United Kingdom, a Senior Security Engineer also in the United Kingdom, and a Social Media Lead in the United States. The company page for Project 11 shows one role added in the past seven days. That pace — three open slots, two in core engineering, one in commercial-facing comms — signals a team building technical backbone and external narrative simultaneously.

The roles map to satellite systems and orbital intelligence work. The backend position sits in the data and services layer powering orbital monitoring. The security role protects that data and the infrastructure generating it. The social media lead translates technical capability into language partners and customers use. None is a pure research seat; each touches production systems operating on orbit or in the ground segment supporting them.

This article covers only the roles themselves. It does not cover compensation bands: those vary by jurisdiction, clearance level, and contract structure in ways a single article cannot resolve. It does not cover Project 11's funding history, investor roster, or valuation; that information is not in the board data and speculative figures serve no one. It does not cover broad space-tech hiring trends: LeoLabs' radar expansion, Google's Project Suncatcher timeline, Loft Orbital's infrastructure program, or Project S's open-role list are separate stories with separate screens. The only signal that matters here is what Project 11's own postings reveal about the filter applicants hit first.

The board data is first-party: ingested directly from Zero G Talent's live feed, not scraped from a careers page that may lag reality by weeks. If a role appears here, it is open now. If it does not, it is not — regardless of what LinkedIn or the company site shows. That distinction matters because the screen applicants face is the one attached to these specific requisitions, not a generic company-wide process.

The First-Pass Filter: How Project 11 Reads an Application

A recruiter at Project 11, or any company running a lean technical hiring loop, never reads your resume first. Software reads it. The applicant-tracking system ingests every application, parses the text, and ranks candidates against a fit score before a human ever opens the file. Harvard Business School and Accenture research shows that over 90 percent of employers use applicant tracking or recruitment management systems to filter middle- and high-skill candidates, and those systems routinely reject qualified people when they miss a rule-based threshold. UnitedCode's 2025 analysis of technical screening found that senior engineers who have moved between startups look "jumpy" and get auto-rejected; engineers with a caregiving gap fail a gap-rule screen; a remote software engineer titled "Platform Generalist" never matches the keyword "Senior Backend Engineer" and never reaches human review.

If your application clears the algorithm, it lands in a queue that a recruiter manages alongside 15 to 25 other open roles. Tufts University's Career Center reports that in the current environment it is not unusual for a recruiter to receive 300 to 500-plus resumes per job. At that volume, a single recruiter could be staring at 10,000-plus resumes at any given time. SmartRecruiters' 2025 Recruitment Benchmarks report puts the global median at 73 applicants per hire, with technology roles receiving 51 percent more — effectively 110 applicants per hire. U.S. hiring teams move about 8 percent faster than the global median, and teams using AI tools hire 26 percent faster than those that don't. The combination of high volume, tight timelines, and pressure to keep pipelines moving forces technical recruiters into brutal trade-offs during the screening stage.

Eye-tracking studies from The Ladders and guidance from Indeed and Tufts converge on the same window: the average initial screen lasts 6 to 8 seconds. In that window the recruiter scans for familiar signals (company names, title matches, keyword clusters, clear dates) and makes a keep-or-discard decision. They over-index on legibility and known brands and under-index on less polished but high-capability profiles. Unconscious bias compounds the effect: recruiters may inadvertently favor candidates from certain schools, with specific name patterns, or whose career paths mirror their own experience. Those biases undermine diversity initiatives and prevent organizations from accessing the full talent pool.

Project 11's open roles sit in a domain where generic software signals don't map cleanly. Satellite systems and orbital intelligence demand specific stack depth: radiation-hardened firmware, ground-segment protocols, RF link budgets, constellation scheduling, and the regulatory framework that governs spectrum and licensing. A resume that lists "distributed systems" and "cloud-native" without naming the relevant protocols (CCSDS, CFDP, GMSEC, or the specific ground-station software suites) will score low on the fit model and likely never reach the hiring manager. The same holds for the security role: "cloud security" and "zero trust" are baseline; the screen looks for hardware-root-of-trust implementations, FIPS 140 validation experience, and supply-chain attestation workflows that are standard in space-grade payloads.

The first human pass is not a review. It is a triage. The recruiter checks whether the candidate's most recent role, title, and highlighted stack align with the scored requirements. They verify location eligibility and clearance status if the role demands it. They look for a project or deliverable that proves the candidate has operated in the same constraint environment (power, mass, latency, and regulatory) that Project 11's systems face on orbit. Anything that requires interpretation gets archived.

The Signals That Get Past the Screen

All three roles (engineering, product, and commercial) sit inside satellite systems and orbital intelligence. That domain focus shapes every signal the screen rewards. Space domain awareness (SDA) has become the crucial differentiator across LEO, MEO, and GEO. LeoLabs' Scout-S radar, which debuted at Valiant Shield in June 2026, detects and persistently tracks objects from 180 to 1,000 kilometers — precisely the regime where China's growing ISR fleet now operates at 900–1,000 kilometers. The industry is moving from periodic observations to persistent custody. Ben Greene, founder and chief innovation officer of Electro Optic Systems, said: "It's down to sensitivity, accuracy and range — those are very important things in terms of gathering military intelligence." Lasers achieve millimeter-precision tracking; radar covers 90% of threats, Breaking Defense reported, but leaves a gap only lasers fill. Candidates who understand that sensor fusion (radar for volume, laser for custody) survive the first pass.

Security clearance status functions as a hard filter. The clearance jobs market reports over 500,000 unfilled cybersecurity positions nationwide, and employers face a shortage of candidates who combine technical skill with integrity, reliability, and situational awareness. Veterans check those boxes: their proven ability to operate under pressure, follow chain-of-command protocols, and protect sensitive information makes them natural fits. Military experience in secure communications, information assurance, and OPSEC gives an immediate edge. If your clearance has recently expired, reactivation within two years of military separation can significantly shorten the background investigation timeline. Financial health matters: debt or unresolved delinquencies are among the most common reasons for clearance denial or revocation. Project 11's roles will require handling sensitive telemetry and tracking data; familiarity with command-and-control systems and orbital operations is a documented advantage for both defense and private-sector space programs.

Technical credentials that map to the sensor stack carry weight. CompTIA Security+, CISSP, and CEH certifications are often the only barrier between a veteran and a six-figure cyber career (certifications the GI Bill can cover). But for orbital intelligence specifically, the markers are narrower: experience with radar or optical sensing architectures, orbital mechanics for maneuvering satellites, rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) analysis, and the data pipelines that turn raw detections into persistent custody. LeoLabs' COO Dan Ceperley noted the need to "cut that down" the hours a satellite can go unobserved depending on orbit. That operational problem — closing observation gaps — is the product problem. Candidates who have built or operated systems that ingest multi-sensor data (S-band radar, laser ranging, optical) and output maintained tracks on maneuvering objects demonstrate the domain fluency the screen selects for.

AI integration is the third signal layer. Initiatives like Project Maven and the JAIC are embedding AI into defense and intelligence frameworks. Veterans' adaptability, systems thinking, and commitment to ethical operations make them invaluable in shaping AI deployment; their situational awareness balances innovation with accountability. For Project 11's product and engineering roles, that translates to: can you design models that ingest noisy, multi-source orbital data and output actionable intelligence without hallucinating maneuvers? The signal isn't "AI experience" generically; it's AI applied to orbital determination, conjunction assessment, or anomaly detection in satellite behavior.

Commercial roles face a different but related screen. LeoLabs is shifting from services to selling Scout-S radars directly to allied governments: as commercial service, contractor-owned, or government-owned. That shift demands fluency in sovereign capability requirements, export control regimes (ITAR/EAR), and the procurement cycles of allied defense ministries. The company is in talks with over a dozen allied countries, Breaking Defense's data shows; at least one has expressed interest in buying multiple units. Candidates who have handled foreign military sales, defense trade cooperation treaties, or allied interoperability requirements signal they can operate in Project 11's commercial lane.

Across all three roles, the through-line is multi-domain operational fluency. Veterans excel in program management, systems integration, and contract oversight where every decision impacts national readiness. Employers actively recruit veterans for leading teams that blend engineering, finance, and field operations. For Project 11, that means the screen rewards evidence of working across the sensor-to-shooter chain: defining requirements with operators, translating them into satellite or ground-system specifications, validating against threat models, and delivering within clearance constraints. A resume that shows only one slice (pure software, pure policy, pure hardware) doesn't survive. The signals that pass are the intersections.

Structuring an Application That Survives the Filter

The screen rewards evidence, not adjectives. Recruiters spend 7.4 seconds on an initial resume review, and applicant-tracking systems scan for exact keyword matches before a human ever sees the file. At Project 11, where satellite systems and orbital intelligence roles draw from the same talent pool as SpaceX, Blue Origin, and legacy primes, the same mechanics apply. Your resume has two audiences: the parser and the person. Both need the same signals in the same places.

Resume Architecture That Parses and Persuades

Single-column layouts with standard section headings parse reliably. Side-by-side or two-column designs fail parsing tests 17.2% of the time; font issues and layout confusion cause the ATS to drop dates, titles, or entire sections. Keep it clean: one column, consistent headings, PDF output.

The top third of page one decides the outcome. Lead with a technical abstract, not a career objective. Two to three sentences: specialty (GNC, structures, avionics, RF, flight software), years on relevant programs (commercial transport, UAV, launch vehicle, satellite), toolchain you use in production, one headline outcome with units, and regulatory or clearance posture. Example: "Aerospace engineer with 6 years on LEO satellite bus and payload integration. Owned GNC subsystem from requirements through on-orbit checkout. Tools: MATLAB/Simulink, Python, STK, CATIA V5 R2022. Standards: NASA-STD-5012, ECSS-E-ST-10. U.S. citizen, active Secret clearance." Every sentence does work. Zero fluff.

Group skills by category so the parser and the recruiter find them fast:

• Design: CATIA, NX, SolidWorks (list versions where relevant, "CATIA V5 R2022" signals production use)
• Analysis: NASTRAN, ANSYS Mechanical 2024 R1, Abaqus, STK, GMAT
• Modeling & Code: MATLAB, Simulink, Python, C++, Rust
• Standards: ECSS, NASA-STD, DO-178C, AS9100, MIL-STD-464
• Process: Requirements flow-down, PDR/CDR preparation, test planning, MBSE

Tie each tool to a program or result in your bullets. A keyword floating in a skills list reads as decoration. The same tool inside a quantified bullet reads as evidence.

Bullet Formula: Action, Method, Scale, Result

The formula that works across every specialty: [Action verb] [component/system] using [method/tool] to meet [requirement/standard], resulting in [measurable outcome].

Aerospace outcomes have natural units. Use the one that matters to the role:

• Mass: "Cut bracket mass 12% (0.8 kg) via topology optimization in NASTRAN"
• Power: "Reduced payload bus draw 18 W through duty-cycle redesign"
• Schedule: "Compressed integration flow 3 weeks by parallelizing harness verification"
• Margin: "Closed negative safety margins on 7 primary fittings, zero waivers"
• Cost: "Saved $680K annually tightening bond-line tolerance to 0.004 in."
• Reliability: "Qualified 450 N biprop thruster, extending mission life 2.3 years"
• Test correlation: "Matched thermal-vac predictions within 3.2°C RMS across 14 sensors"

Lead every bullet with a strong verb: Designed, Engineered, Simulated, Validated, Optimized, Qualified, Integrated, Automated. Never "responsible for" or "supported." Close with a number a chief engineer can benchmark.

Name the program. Recruiters scan for program names: Falcon 9, New Glenn, SLS, Starlink, OneWeb, GPS III, or internal codenames cleared for public release. If ITAR or NDA restricts detail, use sanitized outcome language: "Led qualification of a classified GEO propulsion subsystem, cutting propellant mass 9.4%." Route the resume through your facility security officer before submitting.

Clearance and Citizenship: Top of Page, Not Buried

Foreign persons generally need authorization before accessing controlled technical data. State status in one line near your contact block: "U.S. citizen | Active Secret clearance" or "U.S. person | TS/SCI eligible." Do not list a lapsed clearance without saying so. Do not claim one you don't hold. This is often a hard filter before a human reads the file.

Tailor the Top Third for Every Posting

Do not reuse the same resume. Rework the summary and first two bullets for each application. Mirror the job description's keywords (CFD, MBSE, CATIA, ANSYS, Python, RF link budget, orbit determination) without stuffing. The ATS matches exact phrasing. If the posting says "PLC programming for finite element analysis," use that wording. If you know CATIA but the posting says NX, list NX; the skills transfer and the parser catches the match.

Portfolio and LinkedIn: The Second Screen

Recruiters use LinkedIn Recruiter to search and filter by keyword: CAD, GD&T, DFMA, FAA, ECSS, STK, GMAT, Python, C++. Your profile must mirror the resume's keyword density and quantified outcomes. Ask coworkers or professors for recommendations that cite specific impact. A searchable business presence now carries weight equal to the resume for many hiring teams.

Include a project portfolio link if you have flight hardware, test data, simulation videos, or open-source contributions. For early-career applicants, capstone and competition projects (AIAA DBF, SAE Aero Design, collegiate rocketry) carry real weight; list outcomes with the same units: thrust, mass, altitude, budget, schedule.

Cover Letter: One Page, Three Paragraphs

Paragraph one: the role, the program or mission that drew you, and your clearance/citizenship fit. Paragraph two: two to three quantified wins that map directly to the posting's top requirements, same verbs, same units. Paragraph three: availability, location flexibility, and a direct ask for the screen. No generic enthusiasm. The cover letter proves you read the job description and can communicate technical impact to a non-specialist screener.

The strongest aerospace resumes lead with program impact — aircraft delivered, certification milestones achieved, performance improvements quantified — not duties.

Senior vs. Early-Career Adjustments

Entry-level: Lead with GPA (3.5+), capstone outcomes, competition results, tool fluency from coursework. Education sits at top. Mid-level: Anchor on specific programs and your documented contribution: subsystem ownership, test campaigns, certification artifacts. Senior/Principal: Open with program ownership, earned-value results, mentorship outcomes, PE license, and clearance credentials. Two pages maximum; one page under 10 years' experience.

Common Failure Modes to Avoid

• Listing every CAD tool touched in a tutorial; stick to production experience
• Burying citizenship or clearance on page two
• Describing classified work beyond what your employer allows
• "Responsible for" phrasing with no scope, standard, or result
• Omitting program phase (concept, PDR, CDR, test, production)
• Claiming a PE license you don't hold, or omitting one you do
• Generic phrases like "team player" or "strong communicator" without evidence
• Jargon walls that lose the HR screener on page one
• Exposing ITAR-restricted or proprietary specifics
• Inflating internship titles into staff-level roles

The screen is literal. It matches keywords, parses structure, and scores quantified outcomes. Feed it what it reads. The human who follows reads the same signals — just slower.

How Candidates and the Talent Market Are Responding

The cleared talent market does not operate through job boards. ClearanceJobs' 2024 survey found that 78 percent of cleared professionals in Huntsville with ten or more years of experience describe themselves as "not actively looking but open to conversation." Only 12 percent are actively applying to postings. For TS/SCI-cleared aerospace engineers specifically, the passive-to-active candidate ratio is estimated at 9:1. Eighty-five percent of VP-level placements in Huntsville defense contractors originate from direct search rather than applicant tracking systems. Organizations that rely on inbound applicant flow for cleared roles are systematically missing the strongest available candidates.

Candidates with active clearances, particularly active TS and TS/SCI, represent a finite and heavily recruited population. The practical result is a market where the best cleared candidates are employed, actively recruited by multiple organizations, and in a strong negotiating position. This cost structure makes candidates with active, transferable clearances significantly more valuable in compensation negotiations than the underlying market rate might suggest. Sponsoring a new employee through the clearance process involves investigation fees, administrative costs, and the opportunity cost of a position that cannot be fully utilized until clearance is granted.

The broader space-tech talent market is reacting to the same structural scarcity. Nineteen defense-tech and new-space employers ran 7,806 open requisitions on their public job boards as of September 2026. Two boards account for 61 percent of the market: SpaceX (2,452) and Anduril (2,313) together post 4,765 of 7,806 reqs. Hardware, electrical, RF and mechanical design (1,140) edges software, autonomy and ML (1,054), and the four physical families together (design, manufacturing engineering, production trades, quality) are 37.1 percent of the cohort. The binding constraint on reindustrialization in 2026 is not capital or software talent: it is the factory layer of manufacturing engineering, quality, supply chain and production leadership (1,969 reqs, 25.2 percent) plus the trades beneath it. Seven hundred forty-eight production technician and trades reqs are open across the 19 boards, more than either quality or manufacturing engineering.

Southern California is the center of gravity: Costa Mesa, Long Beach, Hawthorne, Torrance, Los Angeles, El Segundo, Irvine, Santa Ana, Huntington Beach and San Diego sum to 3,561 reqs, 45.6 percent of everything posted. The cohort is a manufacturing labor market wearing a software company's vocabulary. Wages for specialized trades rose roughly 8 percent in 2025, outpacing many office salaries. Younger workers have noticed: nearly half of Gen Z say they would choose an apprenticeship or trade training over university. As automation absorbs office work, skilled trades in aviation maintenance and defense manufacturing are surging back. McKinsey expects millions of workers to move into hands-on roles by 2030.

Applicants are adapting. The resume does not mean what it used to. Degrees and titles still matter, but capability matters more. With skills-based hiring, 90 percent of companies report fewer hiring mistakes. Major players like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have leaned into skills-based pathways — "show me how you would solve this system failure" instead of "tell me where you worked." The Marine Corps implemented pre-employment testing consisting of work samples, case studies, and skills-based interviews. Navy CIO Jane Rathbun supported returning civil service tests and argued that whether candidates possess formal degrees should not matter.

AI now touches nearly every step: reading resumes, sending updates, scheduling interviews. Around 87 percent of companies use AI in recruitment, but none can let automated tools run the whole process. In A&D, AI exposes weak spots like inconsistent screening and the security clearance bottleneck. AI-powered talent sourcing tools accelerate passive candidate identification significantly, but their use in defense and aerospace recruitment requires attention to compliance boundaries: data handling requirements for cleared candidate information, equal employment opportunity implications of algorithmic filtering, and OFCCP audit trail requirements for federal contractors. Organizations that implement AI sourcing tools without accounting for these requirements create compliance exposure that offsets the efficiency gains.

Good recruiters are becoming analysts, tracking where the best hires come from and what keeps cleared candidates engaged. Organizations using analytics in recruitment are 2.5x more likely to improve long-term outcomes. Data is finally showing managers why someone succeeds after they are hired. In A&D, where vetting stretches timelines, communication is everything. Positive candidate experiences influenced 66 percent of job acceptances, while poor experiences caused 26 percent of offer declines. Defense organizations implement AI chatbots for instant responses, status updates and tailored interview preparation materials.

The security clearance population has historically underrepresented women, veterans of color, and candidates from lower-income backgrounds, not because cleared roles require profiles that exclude these groups, but because the pathways into the clearance-eligible talent pool have been unevenly accessible. This creates both a compliance obligation and a strategic opportunity: organizations that build intentional pipelines into underrepresented talent pools expand their addressable cleared candidate supply while meeting OFCCP and executive order requirements for federal contractor workplaces. Practical DEI strategies for cleared hiring in 2026 include targeted partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic-Serving Institutions that have established pathways into defense and aerospace careers, structured interview processes that reduce evaluator bias in competency assessment, and clearance sponsorship programs designed to bring high-potential candidates from underrepresented backgrounds into clearance-eligible roles.

Military transition remains a primary pipeline. Veterans and active reservists make up nearly 20 percent of Northrop Grumman's workforce. The Department of Defense SkillBridge initiative connects transitioning personnel with industry partners during their final 180 days of service. Lockheed Martin's Heroes Program provides fellowships and career development pathways for veterans, military spouses and transitioning members. The U.S. Navy's Talent Pipeline Program partners with the National Defense Industrial Association to train and support small and medium-sized manufacturers. The Air Force Digital University serves over 5,000 learners from eight mission partners with a 100 percent utilization rate. The Defense Civilian Training Corps enrolled 90 undergraduate students at four universities and provided full tuition scholarships with project-based internships.

DARPA's BRIDGES program piloted a 30-day clearance sponsorship model and selected 19 small businesses for security clearances valid through September 2026. The Space Force's Commercial Space Office prepared to copy this approach across Space Systems Command. A key National Background Investigation Services improvement reduced Periodic Reinvestigations by 54 percent while increasing continuous vetting enrollments. The DoD Cyber Workforce Framework now standardizes knowledge and skills across the entire department, enabling rapid response during cyber incidents. Interview intelligence platforms standardize questions and capture candidate responses. Pipeline efficiency increased by 28 percent. The Department of Defense implements AI-driven analytics to optimize civilian personnel operations and forecast workforce needs. Predictive models analyze historical patterns to identify skill gaps.

The hunt for the perfect candidate has become a primary driver of program schedule slippage. A critical role left open is not an HR line item — it is a direct threat to mission readiness. Glassdoor data shows companies with smooth, transparent processes are 2.7x more likely to see higher employee satisfaction later. The industry-wide attrition rate is 15 percent, more than double the cross-industry average. Twenty-five percent of the current A&D workforce is at or beyond retirement age. The pipeline of transitioning military personnel does not fully replace this retirement wave at the senior and subject matter expert levels.

Organizations that approach defense and aerospace hiring with standard recruiting methods are systematically losing the candidates who produce the most organizational value. With the structural scarcity of candidates who match every technical and regulatory requirement from day one, the most effective organizations in this sector have shifted their hiring criteria toward 80 percent technical competency and 20 percent adaptability, investing in clearance sponsorship and domain-specific training for candidates who demonstrate the high-potential profile. This approach expands the addressable talent pool significantly without compromising the quality of the people hired.

The parser doesn't care about your narrative. It cares that you've written CCSDS, not "space protocols." That you've qualified a thruster, not "supported propulsion." That your clearance is active, not "eligible." Three roles sit open on the Zero G Talent board right now — backend, security, comms — and the screen between you and the hiring manager is the same one that filtered the last 500 applicants. The difference between archived and interviewed is a resume that speaks the satellite's language: power, mass, latency, orbit.

Working in space? Zero G Talent tracks the openings: see every open Project 11 role, browse space jobs, the companies hiring, and the people building the field.