Space Force acquisition branch plans hiring push

The top civilian overseeing the Space Force’s acquisition branch says the command aims to hire 100 employees each month as it rebuilds following last year’s civilian purge.

“We’re doing a full-court press,” Natalie Riedel, executive director of Space Systems Command, said in a release Wednesday. “It’s an aggressive goal, but we have to get there.”

The Space Force has been hit hard by the Trump administration’s efforts to slash the federal workforce and its contractor support. Civilians make up about one-third of the Pentagon’s smallest service, more than in any other branch of the military.

“The number one priority for me right now is working with our [Human Capital Directorate] team to fill critical vacancies,” Riedel said. “We obviously took a big hit in 2025 — that was a rough year for everyone across the board. We lost a lot of civilians.”

Space Systems Command employed nearly 2,900 civilians at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term in January 2025, according to Office of Personnel Management data. That fell to around 2,500 workers — an 11% drop — when most departures took effect at the end of the fiscal year in September. Its workforce has not rebounded.

SSC civilians currently comprise about half of the Space Force’s entire civilian workforce of around 5,100 personnel.

But as the Space Force continues to expand, its civilian workforce needs to regain that lost ground — and then some. The service is asking Congress to fund around 7,200 civilian jobs overall in 2027, a 40% bump over 2026, to staff a burgeoning slate of missions from communications relay to missile warning to offensive cyber operations.

Most pressing are vacancies in SSC’s contracting corps, where around 40% of jobs sit empty. Riedel hopes to get that number down to about 20%. Backfilling civilian cybersecurity roles is another top priority, she said.

“We are also hiring firefighters at our Space Launch Deltas. We are hiring engineers; we’re hiring program managers,” she said. “We need the recent college graduates and we need mid-career professionals.”

Plenty of people are interested: SSC is sifting through more than 1,000 resumes gathered from several hiring events this year. Still, competing with the private sector for a small pool of qualified candidates is tricky.

Because living near SSC’s Los Angeles headquarters is expensive, Riedel said, the command is focused on hiring at offices from Colorado to Boston and doing more to make each unit feel connected.

In January, SSC Commander Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant said the organization could turn to contractors and remote workers to fill persistent staffing gaps. But those are short-term fixes that may hinder the Space Force’s ability to rebuild a strong bench of experts for years to come.

“We know where the long poles are and where the bottlenecks are, and we are removing those and asking for assistance where we can,” Riedel said.

It’s not the only Space Force organization mounting a major rehiring push. Space Training and Readiness Command said in April it sought to hire more than 400 civilians for jobs ranging from intelligence analysis to wargaming.

“STARCOM exists to forge the world’s most combat-credible space force and that mission depends on the strength of our total workforce,” Commander Maj. Gen. James Smith said in a release. “These new teammates will be vital to helping us expand the pipelines.”

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