Sinking ship - Systems Engineer 2 Sierra Space Employee Review

Joined a few months ago, right as Dan Jablonsky (ex-Maxar, ex-Ursa Major) took over as CEO and the company closed a $550M Series C at an $8B valuation. That combination of new operational leadership plus fresh capital is rare to walk into, and you can feel the shift toward more disciplined execution already. The mission itself is the real draw: Dream Chaser, the LIFE habitat, Orbital Reef, national security space work. The company is pushing hard on modern AI tooling across engineering, from code assistance to workflow automation, so you’re not fighting decade-old tooling to get things done. And unlike the primes, the company is still small enough that an individual engineer can move a program forward, not just a ticket queue. If you want your work to be traceable to a launch, this is one of the few places left where that’s true.

This is a company mid-transition: post-spinoff, post-CEO-change, scaling fast, so process and communication are still catching up to ambition. Expect some rough edges: unclear ownership on cross-team work, evolving standards, and the pace that comes with a fast-growing R&D shop. If you need a fully mature org chart and buttoned-up process on day one, wait a year or two.

Pay was decent and 401k match was great if you could last that long.

This was the biggest speed bump in my career to date. The company was dragged down by the dream chaser heritage and process. Nothing moves fast, I’m not sure how much work is actually happening here. Everyone seems busy with endless meeting yet nothing gets done. Their satellite production facility was nothing more than a couple empty buildings they had a lease on, no real work happened to develop these into workable spaces and they sat empty while we had more meetings to talk about what we should do. Little to no ability to progress in your career, rarely saw promotions other than senior leadership. PTO policy was subpar, two weeks per year that must be accrued is terrible for anyone mid career and above.