The Exploration Company

Space cargo transportation
Last updated:
February 5, 2026
Company details
HQ
HEADCOUNT
100-499
ORG TYPE
Startup
SECTOR
Transportation & Infrastructure
About the company
The Exploration Company is a European aerospace startup building “Nyx”, a modular and reusable orbital space vehicle focused on cargo delivery and return from low Earth orbit, with longer-term ambitions beyond that. The Exploration Company was founded in 2021 and positions the company around international collaboration and open approaches to vehicle design. The Exploration Company recruits across engineering, operations, and business roles, with a noticeable volume of spacecraft development and test-focused hiring. Public reporting on people practices is patchy, so the score leans heavily on job posts and candidate interview feedback.
Locations and presence
The Exploration Company lists Munich (HQ), Bordeaux, Turin, and Houston as office locations. Hiring appears concentrated in Europe (especially France and Germany), with a smaller US presence.
Palpable Score
47.4
/ 100
The Exploration Company looks accessible to students and recent graduates through recurring internships and “working student” style roles, but early-career confidence is undermined by repeated public complaints about interview structure and feedback quality. Pay transparency and outcome evidence (progression, retention) are limited in public materials, which keeps the overall score in the middle.
Pillar 1: Early-career access

Score

13.0
/ 20
  • The company publicly advertises internships and working-student opportunities across disciplines, including roles open to enrolled students and recent graduates.
  • The Exploration Company shows recurring hiring volume through large job-board footprints and a steady stream of technical openings, which suggests ongoing team growth rather than one-off junior intake.
  • The company still mixes “early-career looking” labels with role requirements that can be more experienced in practice (for example, some postings categorized as junior requiring multiple years in niche hardware domains), which makes true entry-level access uneven.

Pillar 2: Hiring fairness and transparency

Score

7.0
/ 20
  • The company has multiple public candidate accounts describing disorganized interviews, mismatched interview scope (culture vs technical), and interviewers appearing unprepared.
  • The Exploration Company is associated with time-heavy case studies or take-home style steps in some candidate reports, plus follow-ups describing generic rejections and lack of feedback after significant effort.
  • The company does still run a recognizable sequence in some cases (HR screen plus panel/case), but consistency and closure look unreliable from publicly available interview feedback.

Pillar 3: Learning and support

Score

11.0
/ 20
  • The company explicitly sells internships on “hands-on experience” on real missions and includes “mentorship from experienced aerospace engineers and leaders” in internship-style postings.
  • The Exploration Company frequently describes cross-functional collaboration (systems, avionics, AIT, design) in technical roles, which can be a strong learning environment when supported well.
  • The company does not publish concrete early-career support mechanics (structured onboarding, buddy systems, training time, review cadence) in a way that can be verified, so learning support can’t score higher.

Pillar 4: Pay fairness and stability

Score

8.7
/ 20
  • The company does not consistently publish salary ranges in publicly visible listings, which caps confidence on pay fairness for graduates.
  • The Exploration Company does signal practical stability supports like relocation and visa/work-permit help, which matters for early-career mobility in aerospace hubs.
  • The company has too little reliable, role-by-role pay data in public sources (and too small a sample in salary aggregators) to judge whether offers are market-competitive.

Pillar 5: Early-career outcomes

Score

7.7
/ 20
  • The company publicly promotes internal mobility as a way to grow careers, but this is not backed by published examples of junior promotions, time-to-promotion, or early-career retention metrics.
  • The Exploration Company’s repeated internship-style hiring suggests some level of early-career pipeline activity, but conversion rates from internship to full-time are not shared publicly.
  • The company’s LinkedIn “Life” presence points to ongoing hiring scale, but public outcome signals for juniors (progression, manager quality, retention over 12–24 months) are missing, limiting the score.

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