Now Hiring: Orbital Habitat Engineer (2076)

• Location: Low Earth orbit, about 400 km up.^[1] Commute by rocket. Hybrid working not available.
• Start date: 2076
• Contract: Permanent, with regular rotations back to Earth
• Salary: Competitive, plus the best view from any office window
• Closing date: Roughly when you finish your GCSEs. Start preparing now.

By 2076, stations in orbit will not just be laboratories. They will be places where people live for months at a time. Today, living structures in space provide only the bare essentials. The experts behind National Engineering Day imagine homes in orbit with lighting that follows our body clocks, artwork, plants and even pets.^[2] Somebody has to build them. That somebody is you.

You will design, build and look after the structures and systems that keep people comfortable in orbit. Not just alive. Comfortable.

What you will do

• Design living modules that are strong enough to survive launch, light enough to lift and pleasant enough that nobody wants to leave.
• Keep the air, water and temperature right on every orbit. Today’s space station goes round the Earth in 92 minutes,^[1] which means 16 orbits every 24 hours.^[3] That is a lot of sunrises to plan the lighting around.
• Recycle almost everything. The International Space Station already recovers about 98% of its water, including from crew sweat and urine.^[4] Your job is to close the loop completely, and do the same for air, food and materials.
• Plan light, greenery and shared spaces so the station feels like a home, not a machine.^[2]
• Inspect and repair the habitat, mostly with robots and occasionally from the outside in a spacesuit.
• Work alongside doctors, architects, roboticists and, most importantly, the people who live there.

What you will need

• Strong maths and physics, especially forces, materials and heat.
• Systems thinking. One change to the water loop affects the air, the power and the people.
• An engineering degree or degree apprenticeship in structural, mechanical or aerospace engineering.
• Calm under pressure. Literally: your workplace is a pressure vessel.
• Clear communication. Some of your team will be on the ground, a very long way down.

Nice to have

• Experience with 3D printing and robotics.
• A good eye for design. People have to live in what you build.
• A complete absence of fear of heights.