Dream of Building Rockets? ‘NASA Force’ Could Be Your Ticket

Space agency partners with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to recruit private sector workers for temporary roles.

Jack Daleo

Thursday, March 05, 2026 at 03:00 PM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Zach Vasile

NASA plans to recruit private sector talent for two-year stints at the space agency. [Credit: NASA]

Key Takeaways:

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman launched "NASA Force," a new program to recruit top private sector talent for temporary (two-year) roles within the agency.
The initiative aims to address a significant talent drain and inject critical skills to rebuild core competencies, especially to accelerate the delayed Artemis moon mission, which now targets two lunar landings in 2028.
Isaacman justified the program by criticizing NASA's operational inefficiencies, including slow progress, high costs, a lack of competition, and outsourced core competencies, emphasizing the urgency to compete with geopolitical rivals in space.

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Newly minted NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman put his early stamp on the space agency with his announcement of “NASA Force”—a program he said will recruit “top aerospace, software, systems, and other critical technical talent” from the private sector to work at the space agency for two-year stints.

Speaking at Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism Summit on Tuesday, Isaacman said the injection of private sector talent will “provide mentorship and training and help season and rebuild the core competencies within the NASA workforce.” The space agency has estimated that more than 4,000 of its civil employees departed in 2025 due to deferred resignation and early retirement programs, as well as natural attrition.