Who actually does EO work today — operators, flight dynamics, ground stations, SAR processing, GeoML, platforms, product — where they sit, where they came from and how deep each bench is. Built from public evidence, published only as aggregates. No names, no employers.
Every space company in Europe eventually asks the same question: is the talent for this team out there, and where? This map answers it the way we answer it for clients — by finding real people with public evidence of the work, then stripping everything that could identify them and keeping only the shape of the market.
Each of the eight role families got the same treatment: one brief, a fixed search budget, a hard evidence rule (a provider record plus at least one public confirmation, or the profile does not count), and the same questions — where are they, which employer type, how many documented years, where did they come from, what role-specific signals show up.
It is a pilot with a limited scope, and we say so everywhere it matters. Read it for patterns and starting points, not for market-size claims.
Seven of ten profiles in the satellite-operations chapter show a move from the console into engineering. Separately, two of five mission-operations engineers have a confirmed earlier operator role. A visible path, not an industry-wide promotion rate.
In the SAR chapter five people work at a university or institute and seven in companies; at least five have a documented move from research into industry. Eleven of twelve hold a PhD. The sample was deliberately SAR-heavy.
Models on imagery, instrument-data processors and data-delivery platforms need different evidence. A title alone — data scientist, software engineer — never qualified a profile. Each got its own chapter and its own signals.
Technical and product competence in CEE is there — strongest in EO product (7 of 12). But the data cannot confirm the brief's hypotheses: a flight-dynamics shortage, CEE as Europe's backend hub, or the size of a re-skillable pool. Those stay hypotheses.
CEE = Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, Croatia. Europe = EU-27 plus the UK, Norway and Switzerland. Declared professional base counts, not nationality. These are study-coverage figures after merging the Europe and CEE samples — not the size of a regional labour market.
For flight dynamics, SAR and EO product we ran an extra CEE-only search of 30 records each. Inclusion was 1 / 30, 2 / 30 and 6 / 30; the European passes for the same roles gave 7 / 55, 10 / 58 and 6 / 54. Different, purpose-built searches with different verification reach — so do not read these as competence frequencies.
Geography typed into a query never acted as a hard filter; every record was checked by hand.
B = Europe search, A = additional CEE search, C = separate transferable-skills probe. 590 result rows gave 534 unique profile addresses; some people surfaced in more than one sample. The original plan of 100 checked profiles and 15–20 recommendations per variant was not reached — stated here, not hidden. Records not included were not judged unqualified.
| Sample | Role family | Area | Distinct records | Included | Inclusion rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B01 | Satellite operations / spacecraft control | Europe | 54 | 10 | 19% |
| B02 | Mission operations engineering | Europe | 56 | 5 | 9% |
| B03 | Flight dynamics | Europe | 55 | 7 | 13% |
| B04 | Ground segment / stations | Europe | 57 | 7 | 12% |
| B05 | SAR & image processing | Europe | 58 | 10 | 17% |
| B06 | EO data science / GeoML | Europe | 57 | 9 | 16% |
| B07 | Geospatial platforms & backend | Europe | 53 | 6 | 11% |
| B08 | EO data & analytics product | Europe | 54 | 6 | 11% |
| A03 | Flight dynamics | CEE | 30 | 1 | 3% |
| A05 | SAR & image processing | CEE | 30 | 2 | 7% |
| A08 | EO data & analytics product | CEE | 30 | 6 | 20% |
| C06 | Computer vision outside EO | CEE | 10 | 4 | 40% |
| C07 | Data platforms outside geospatial | CEE | 10 | 1 | 10% |
Included: professional control or execution of satellite or ground-system operations, current or since 30 October 2023. Different job titles qualify if they document the same function; several people have since moved into engineering. Alongside EO, science, interplanetary and navigation missions were allowed by the brief.
1 of 10 profiles list languages; languages were never guessed from name, country or university.
| Operator → engineer path | yes 7 · unconfirmed 2 · no data 1 |
| Student satellite project | yes 1 · no data 9 |
| Electronics / automation degree | no data 10 |
A rocketry or generic academic mission project was not coded as a student satellite. A missing degree entry does not mean missing technical competence.
| # | What the public evidence shows | Evidence rule met |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Holds a professional controller role and certification for operating navigation satellites. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 02 | Combines satellite control and ground-segment experience on Earth-observation missions. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 03 | Professional satellite-control and ground-segment role, independent of an earlier academic project. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 04 | Moved from the console of observation missions to analysis and preparation of operations for the next satellites. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 05 | Recent professional mission-control experience on an interplanetary mission, followed by satellite operations. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 06 | Moved from spacecraft control into mission-operations engineering. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 07 | Combines recent controller shifts with ongoing engineering work in operations. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 08 | Listed in a professional space-mission controller team. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 09 | Monitors spacecraft telemetry in a professional control centre. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 10 | Combines recent EO mission operations with de-orbit and anomaly-handling experience. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
Included: engineering responsibility for procedures, automation, flight readiness or anomaly resolution. Console work alone, or control-centre software development alone, was not enough.
2 of 5 profiles list languages; languages were never guessed from name, country or university.
| Earlier operator role | yes 2 · no data 3 |
| Constellation size | separate missions 3 · no confirmed number 2 |
| Operations environment | commercial on agency mission 3 · commercial 2 |
| # | What the public evidence shows | Evidence rule met |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Leads all-subsystem activities during commissioning of SAR constellation satellites. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 02 | Leads LEOP and commissioning and automates routine satellite operations. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 03 | Leads operations engineering and a team supporting long-duration orbital missions. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 04 | Prepares operations before launch and supports commissioning of satellites and instruments. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 05 | Combines subsystem operations engineering with mission-execution automation. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
Included: professional or doctoral orbit determination, manoeuvre planning and trajectory analysis. AOCS/GNC without confirmed orbit-level work was treated as adjacent. Seven profiles come from the Europe sample and one from the CEE sample.
2 of 8 profiles list languages; languages were never guessed from name, country or university.
| PhD | yes 4 · no data 4 |
| Environment | commercial 6 · agency / research 2 |
| Adjacent AOCS/GNC | no data 8 |
| # | What the public evidence shows | Evidence rule met |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Combines spacecraft flight dynamics with space-surveillance and traffic-management work. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 02 | Designs mission trajectories and flight-analysis tools. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 03 | Determines orbits of space objects from optical observations. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 04 | Researches orbit evolution and designs options for removing satellites from congested regions. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 05 | Combines professional flight dynamics with satellite-operations engineering. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 06 | Determines orbit during long electric-propulsion manoeuvres. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 07 | Develops commercial orbital-dynamics solutions and operations-support software. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 08 | Combines flight-dynamics practice with orbit-uncertainty research in space surveillance. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
Included: work on stations, antennas, links or ground-segment control systems. Management experience did not exclude a profile where sources showed earlier hands-on engineering and current responsibility for the area.
1 of 7 profiles list languages; languages were never guessed from name, country or university.
| Dominant area | RF / comms 3 · systems / infrastructure 2 · RF / hardware 1 · software / automation 1 |
| Transition from telecom | yes 1 · no data 6 |
| Polar-station practice | yes 1 · responsibility, on-site unconfirmed 1 · no data 5 |
A person's professional base and the station location are different facts. Work on Arctic infrastructure was not converted into a claim of living in the Arctic.
| # | What the public evidence shows | Evidence rule met |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Builds and upgrades ground-station antennas, including in polar conditions. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 02 | Combines satellite-communications engineering with development of an Arctic station and data centre. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 03 | Troubleshoots ground-station links, including Ka-band transmission. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 04 | Responsible for operating and expanding an international ground-station network. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 05 | Designs ground-station and communications systems for mission operations. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 06 | Specialises in ground-station requirements and operations, including Ka-band. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 07 | Built a control centre used to operate a fleet of satellites collecting maritime data. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
Included: development of instrument-data processing, calibration, focusing or interferometric techniques at processor level. Using finished imagery for analytics was not enough. Ten profiles from the Europe sample and two from CEE; scope also covers airborne optical sensors and bistatic radar.
2 of 12 profiles list languages; languages were never guessed from name, country or university.
| Data / instrument type | SAR 10 · SAR, satellite-to-ground bistatic 1 · optical / airborne 1 |
| PhD | yes 11 · no data 1 |
| Institute or university → company | yes 5 · unconfirmed 5 · no data 2 |
| # | What the public evidence shows | Evidence rule met |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Works on SAR instrument calibration, the stage before analysis of finished imagery. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 02 | Researches and calibrates optical Earth-imaging sensors, including airborne ones. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 03 | Develops SAR focusing, calibration and interferometry algorithms. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 04 | Develops tomographic and interferometric processing of radar data. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 05 | Experience in SAR focusing and in assessing parameters of future radar missions. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 06 | Develops signal-processing and radar-imaging methods at a research institute. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 07 | Designs SAR processing and calibration chains in a commercial environment. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 08 | Works on noise and interference assessment affecting SAR image quality. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 09 | Develops SAR product quality, including geolocation accuracy and noise characteristics. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 10 | Designs and deploys operational radar-data processors for satellite instruments. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 11 | Develops simulation and data processing across the whole SAR mission chain. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 12 | Develops bistatic SAR set-ups and processing using a satellite transmitter and ground receiver. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
Included: professional machine-learning models or data analysis where satellite or airborne imagery is the primary input. The signal was concrete applications and publications, not 'AI' in a job title.
0 of 9 profiles list languages; languages were never guessed from name, country or university.
| Start of the ML / DS path | EO-native 8 · no data 1 |
| Environment | EO company 8 · research institute 1 |
| Application | agriculture 2 · infrastructure 1 · forestry 1 · urban / agriculture 1 · maritime 1 · sea / environment 1 · environment / image quality 1 · environment / water 1 |
EO-native means the documented ML/DS path starts in EO or remote sensing. It is not a claim that the person never worked outside the field.
| # | What the public evidence shows | Evidence rule met |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Combines machine learning with change detection around infrastructure on satellite imagery. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 02 | Builds deep-learning models for satellite and aerial image analysis. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 03 | Builds classification and segmentation models of satellite imagery for agriculture. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 04 | Applies machine learning to multispectral and hyperspectral imagery. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 05 | Develops and tests object detection on satellite imagery, including vessels. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 06 | Links satellite-data analysis models to a crop-monitoring product. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 07 | Applies deep learning to classification of optical and radar imagery. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 08 | Builds ship- and pollution-detection models on satellite data. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 09 | Builds vegetation-classification models from hyperspectral data and airborne scanning. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
Included: backend, platforms and pipelines whose main workload is EO or geospatial data. Employment at a space company, generic backend or cloud familiarity alone was not enough.
1 of 6 profiles list languages; languages were never guessed from name, country or university.
| Start of the path | geospatial-native 4 · from general data engineering 1 · no data 1 |
| Business type | EO 5 · GIS 1 |
| Cloud-native geospatial standards | yes 2 · no evidence of specific standards 1 · no data 3 |
General cloud architecture was not equated with knowledge of STAC, COG or Zarr. The confirmed examples of standards concern STAC.
| # | What the public evidence shows | Evidence rule met |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Develops a STAC catalogue and EO data-access services. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 02 | Designs a platform and pipelines processing large volumes of radar data. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 03 | Experience architecting large geospatial platforms and developing open-source tools. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 04 | Leads development of a geospatial data-processing platform. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 05 | Combines satellite-data processing with compute infrastructure and DevOps. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 06 | Builds scalable data pipelines and automates geospatial processing. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
Included: responsibility for an EO or geospatial data product, backed by a role record and public professional context. GIS was allowed, as in the brief. Six profiles from Europe and six from CEE. Sales-only or project-only roles were not enough; two confirmed product roles were left out because the data-product scope was unclear.
3 of 12 profiles list languages; languages were never guessed from name, country or university.
| Earlier career area | GIS 4 · GIS / EO 2 · engineering / EO 2 · engineering 1 · generic SaaS / product 1 · no data 2 |
| Operator vs analytics | operator 8 · analytics / data 4 |
| Product segment | B2B data users · infrastructure / public · climate · forest risk · insurance / crisis · EO platform users · crisis management (one each) · no data 5 |
| # | What the public evidence shows | Evidence rule met |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Owns development of a geospatial data product based on user research. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 02 | Product responsibility across satellite data and GIS. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 03 | Moved from EO data engineering and analysis into a product role. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 04 | Develops geospatial products supporting climate resilience and nature protection. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 05 | Owns a product built on satellite imagery. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 06 | Combines management of a satellite-data platform with responsibility for its roadmap. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 07 | Leads satellite analytics products for catastrophe events. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 08 | Turns SAR data into deforestation- and flood-risk monitoring products. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 09 | Moved from GIS analysis to product management at a satellite-data company. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 10 | Brings GIS analysis experience into a product role at a satellite operator. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 11 | Moved from EO data analysis to product responsibility in data-access services. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
| 12 | Develops commercial geohazard-monitoring services and owns EO product design. | ✓ provider record + public confirmation |
Four computer-vision and one data-platform profile. Each has a provider record and public evidence of the relevant professional work; none shows EO or geospatial as a work area in the materials reviewed. Interest in changing industry was not established. Neither pool reached the 20-example ceiling the brief allowed.
For CV: coordinate systems, sensor and resolution differences, time series, geographic train/test splits, label quality. For platforms: raster/vector, catalogues and metadata, geospatial standards, transform performance, cloud data layout. Requirements to check — not gaps proven in anyone.
Transferable examples and the earlier demo-recruitment projects are not included here.
Germany's weight comes from operations, flight dynamics and SAR samples clustering around Darmstadt and Munich — a property of the searches as much as of the market.
Darmstadt and "Frankfurt / Rhine-Main" are shown separately: a region was never forced into a city. Nine profiles have a known country but no sufficiently documented city. 26 further places have one profile each.
Recorded for 12 of 69 profiles; one person may list several. Never inferred.
Manufacturers and integrators are the biggest previous employer (21) but not the biggest current one (13). Universities show the same drain: 10 previous, 1 current. EO/GIS data and software companies and satellite operators are where people land. If you are an integrator or a lab, you are the industry's training ground.
44 profiles have two or more public documents, 25 have one. For 12 the public confirmation is limited to a LinkedIn profile or the person's own material; for 57 at least one non-LinkedIn source was used. Document count is not source count — a provider, a profile and a directory can repeat the same claim.
Two semantic searches per Europe sample, one per CEE sample (flight dynamics, SAR, product), plus two short CEE searches for transferable skills. Records were merged on normalised profile addresses, then checked for function, geography, work history and public professional materials: employer and institution pages, conference papers, publications, team directories and people's own descriptions of their work.
Minimum for inclusion: a provider record plus at least one public confirmation of professional identity or substantive experience. Not every job-history detail has a separate independent source. A person's own LinkedIn profile counts as public, but may be the provider's source too. An older publication confirms historical competence; the current title and base may come from the current profile record.
Remaining records are "not included", with reasons kept in the study register. For most, full public verification was not completed — absence from the map is not a judgement. No employer category was an exclusion filter and no minimum tenure was applied.
Selection was purposive and depended on search visibility, keywords and publication availability. It likely over-represents seniors, paper authors and large hubs. English-language queries under-reach people who describe their work locally. Operations led to Germany, ground segment to the Nordics, image processing to SAR. For these reasons we publish no market-share percentages, no total-talent estimates and no shortage ranking.
The brief's hypotheses — "flight dynamics is the rarest", "CEE is the backend bench", "GeoML is the largest pool", "product is the bottleneck" — remain hypotheses. This data provides examples and directions for the next round, not a decisive test.
Only distributions and generalised reasons are published. No names, no employer names, no profile quotes, no links to people. No table links an individual's exact title, city and career path, because that combination would make them easy to find. The register with the required fields and evidence assignments stays internal.
Nobody was contacted; no private contact data or compensation expectations were collected. The material describes the presence of competence in sources, not intent to change jobs. Before any recruitment use, current employment, scope, location and the specific role's requirements must be re-checked.
A map says where people are. A demo recruitment answers a narrower question — who is worth a first conversation for this role, in this city, on these terms. These earlier projects are not added to the map; a person found again was re-checked from scratch. The numbers are shortlists, not hires, replies or confirmed availability.
What had to be checked: on-site work, rotating shifts, and the line between console practice and adjacent experience.
What had to be checked: ownership of operations, automation, Barcelona working conditions and relocation readiness.
What had to be checked: new-business selling, regional markets, infrastructure procurement and EO technical context.
Initials only; employers and source links are disclosed to the commissioning client. See what a demo brief looks like →
Send the role you are weighing — opened or not — and get a real, evidence-backed shortlist within one working day. Or ask for the map of a role family we have not covered yet. Nobody gets contacted until you say so.
Pilot edition, 30 October 2026. Future editions will widen the CEE samples and add the ground-segment CEE pass, the Sell link and solutions engineering.