Company details

HEADCOUNT

100-499

ORG TYPE

Startup

SECTOR

Technology & Digital

WEBSITE

https://www.open-cosmos.com

About the company

Open Cosmos is a satellite mission provider that designs, builds, and operates small satellites and the systems around them. The company positions the work around using space data for real-world use cases like environmental monitoring and operational decision-making. Open Cosmos runs multi-disciplinary engineering teams that span spacecraft production, flight software, and mission operations. The company also operates a job market footprint across several European hubs.

Locations and presence

Open Cosmos is headquartered at Harwell (Oxfordshire, UK) and lists operational entities and addresses in places including Barcelona (Spain), Porto (Portugal), and the Athens area (Greece). Hiring is posted across multiple locations, with a mix of hybrid and on-site expectations depending on the role.

Palpable Score

63.7

/ 100

Open Cosmos shows real entry points for early-career candidates through internships and at least one explicitly “Entry Level” engineering role, plus job descriptions that spell out day-to-day scope. The score is held back by limited pay transparency in postings and mixed public feedback on the interview experience, especially around long challenge projects and communication.

Pillar 1: Early-career access

Score

14.7

/ 20

The company lists a Flight Software Engineer (Entry Level) role alongside multiple internship roles, giving graduates more than one way in.
Open Cosmos advertises internships in quality and product assurance across different countries, suggesting early-career hiring is not limited to one team or one office.
The company posts roles across several functions and locations, but only a small visible slice is clearly targeted at 0–3 years, which caps how high this pillar can go.

Pillar 2: Hiring fairness and transparency

Score

11.7

/ 20

The company’s Flight Software Engineer (Entry Level) description is specific about responsibilities (guided work, testing, integration, documentation) and who candidates need to be (baseline programming, willingness to learn).
Open Cosmos has public interview-process feedback describing multi-stage processes that can include a substantial “challenge project,” with some candidates reporting unclear timelines and inconsistent follow-up.
The company uses an ATS-style application flow and states practical constraints (work authorization, language of CV, location rules), but there is little public detail on how assessments are scoped or time-boxed for junior applicants.

Pillar 3: Learning and support

Score

14.3

/ 20

The company explicitly frames the entry-level flight software role as working “under the guidance of senior engineers,” with exposure to reviews and the full software lifecycle.
Open Cosmos describes hands-on learning in internship postings, including participation in real production and test activities and cross-functional collaboration with engineers and technicians.
The company signals a collaborative environment, but there is limited public evidence of structured early-career development (formal onboarding plans, dedicated mentoring schemes, or defined progression frameworks).

Pillar 4: Pay fairness and stability

Score

10.7

/ 20

The company advertises full-time roles for early-career entry points (not only short contracts), which is a positive stability signal.
Open Cosmos does not consistently publish salary ranges or equity/benefits detail on the roles reviewed here, making it hard for juniors to judge fairness before applying.
The company has some third-party salary signals in certain locations, but the coverage is uneven and not clearly tied to early-career roles, so this pillar stays capped.

Pillar 5: Early-career outcomes

Score

12.3

/ 20

The company has a steady flow of live openings that include internships and an entry-level engineering role, which is a concrete signal that early-career hiring happens in the present, not just historically.
Open Cosmos has public employer-review signals that are more positive than negative overall, but the available detail is not broken out cleanly for early-career employees.
The company has limited public, measurable early-career outcome data (promotion rates, intern-to-full-time conversion, junior retention over 12–24 months), and LinkedIn-style tenure signals are not enough on their own to score this pillar higher.