This decision was approved at the 342nd meeting of the ESA Council, which happened 17-18 December 2025 year. The agency plans to hire approx 520 new employees. This will lead to an increase in staff by approx 400 positions, because close 120 positions will be replaced by employees, who will retire.
With this expansion, the total number of full-time ESA employees (excluding contractors) will grow to approx 3400 persons. Workforce expansion comes with additional programmatic requirements following Member States' approval of increased funding by 31% for a three-year period at the Council of Ministers in November 2025 year.
ESA will not only be looking for traditional engineers, but also data processing specialists, IT specialists, project managers and business analysts. Current vacancies and recruitment information can be found on the official ESA job portal.
Source: https://spacenews.com