Aerospace & defense · week of October 19, 2026
Aerospace & defense plant jobs: 1154 open roles at 44 manufacturers
Who's hiring plant engineers, technicians and supervisors in aerospace & defense, what it pays, and the skills they ask for.
How aerospace & defense compares with other industries →
- 1,154
- open plant roles
- 237
- posted in the last 7 days
- 44
- manufacturers hiring
- $100k–$136k
- typical engineering base
21% of all openings
SpaceX, Anduril Industries, Blue Origin
+7% vs the US
The takeaways
- 1
Manufacturing has the most openings in Aerospace & defense: 425 roles, ahead of quality (232).
- 2
$101k–$172k is the typical base for lean / ci engineers, the best-paid team here (3 postings list pay).
- 3
7% above the US typical engineering base: Aerospace & defense pays $100k–$136k.
- 4
SpaceX is hiring the most, with 220 open plant roles, 18 of them new this week.
Explore by team
Openings and pay, team by team
Tap a team to see its skills and hirers.
Open roles
openposted this week
Typical base pay (engineers and senior engineers)
- Lean / CIBest paid$101k–$172k
- Controls$120k–$153k
- Process$97k–$145k
- Reliability$105k–$140k
- Production$100k–$136k
- Industrial$97k–$136k
- Quality$100k–$135k
- Manufacturing$100k–$135k
Skills plants name most
- Root cause#1 ask49%
- New product launch42%
- Tooling34%
- Lean31%
- Automation30%
Top 5 shown. See all of them →
Hiring the most
- 1SpaceX220
- 2Anduril Industries169
- 3Blue Origin77
- 4BAE Systems76
- + the rest of the top hirers with a free account
By state
Where the plant jobs are
Tap a state for its report.
Top 5:1. California 1,0802. Texas 8163. Ohio 4754. Michigan 4215. Illinois 358
Who plants are hiring
Engineers, techs and supervisors
1,014 engineering and Lean / CI roles; 140 technician and supervisor roles on the same teams.
- Engineer555 · 48%
- Senior343 · 30%
- Manager / lead116 · 10%
- Supervisor18 · 2%
- Technician122 · 11%
How fresh
When these roles went up
Roles posted in the last two weeks get the fastest replies from teams.
- This week237
- 8–14 days117
- 15–30 days299
- 30+ daysMost501
Where
Top cities
- Long Beach, CAMost roles107
- Bastrop, TX84
- Costa Mesa, CA80
- Hawthorne, CA50
- Space Coast, FL37
Go deeper: what moves pay
Belt and license premiums, pay by years asked, skills that come as a package, and the unusual perks plants offer.
Source and method
- Source
- ShopFloorJobs analysis of 1,154 live plant job postings from 44 manufacturers' own careers sites (Workday, SuccessFactors, Oracle, iCIMS, Greenhouse and others), not job boards.
- Collected
- Week of October 19, 2026. Postings are re-checked daily; closed roles drop out.
- Method
- Each posting is counted once per role and city. Teams and levels are read from the job title; pay is the middle of each posting's listed range, for engineer and senior engineer levels, shown where at least 3 postings list one; skills are counted when the posting names them.
Cite this report
ShopFloorJobs, "Aerospace & defense plant jobs report, week of October 19, 2026," Week of October 19, 2026. https://shopfloorjobs.com/reports/industry/aerospace-and-defense
Free to quote and share with a link to this page.