Good for building skills - Anonymous employee Moon Express Employee Review

For anyone interested in space exploration, working at Moon Express is a breath of fresh air. The company is small, which gives you the opportunity to blaze your own trail, and explore areas of interest. Living and working on the Space Coast of Florida, is amazing. Rockets launch monthly from Cape Canaveral, occasionally having three (3) or more launches each month. The night launches and flyback of the Falcon 9 is breathtakingly beautiful. All this while living in a vacation destination. The local area has all the amenities anyone could want (mall, movie theater, and many family owned & chain restaurants.) You can surf and fish all year round, and Orlando International Airport is a mere 40 minutes away. Take a cruise to the Bahamas, or spend an evening on the casino boat. Being part of Moon Express is being part of space history, and I am grateful I get to be a part of it. Their ambitious goal to be the first commercial lander on the Moon is within reach, and it takes a lot of effort to achieve. As a member of the team working to make that happen, your role directly impacts the mission. Since it is a small team it quickly feels like family.

Not everyone who wants to can be a part of this: As a small team everyone needs a high level of dedication, commitment, and ability to go with the flow, and work together. As a small company, policies and best practices are still emerging. Direction may be limited; you will be expected to learn what you don't know to get the job done.

Moon Express is on a mission to open up lunar resources by first building a disruptive low cost series of spacecraft able to reach the Moon from Earth orbit. The company is the ONLY company on the planet with a commercial lunar lander at the stage of flight testing. NASA selected Moon Express as one of three U.S. partners to help (re)build U.S. capability to land on the Moon. The company is well financed these days, with backing from several billionaires. Even in the early fundraising days when cashflow was often tight, the company never missed a payroll, which is pretty remarkable for a start up with a huge fundraising challenge. The company is closely tied to Singularity University, with founders and board members in common. With a "Silicon Valley" style culture, the company has a generous employee stock option plan. The company is headquartered at the NASA Research but has relationships with a number of NASA centers, including the Kennedy Space Center where the company conducted its first vehicle flight tests, starting in Dec 2014. The company recently announced its tenancy at Cape Canaveral at Space Launch Complex 36, becoming the 2nd "newspace" company to set up operations at the Cape next to SpaceX. The company is currently staffing up in Florida and is restructuring its engineering and technical operations for the move to Cape Canaveral, and recently let a number of employees go in its Mountain View and Huntsville operations. This has led to a number of recent negative reviews on this site by disaffected and disillusioned former staff, mostly inexperienced young engineers who had not worked anywhere else and had been negatively influenced by some former middle managers who were often at odds with the company's executive team. Moon Express is a company with a big vision, immense conviction and strong personalities in its executive management.. where people of similar mindset and conviction can thrive and change the world. The CEO is a visionary with a track record of building radical new institutions like International Space University and Singularity University that have created channels for young people all over the world to pursue their dreams and make a difference. The company's board and backers are experienced entrepreneurs and billionaires who have built whole new industries. There is no shortage of potential for Moon Express to fulfill its vision of becoming the first private enterprise to build a "railway" to the Moon and tap into the vast resources waiting there to improve life on Earth.

If you are just looking for a job or are not passionate about space exploration, this is not the place for you. The CEO and executive management expect complete dedication and if you desire a 9-5 lifestyle in a predictable, secure environment, you should go work for a large aerospace company. Being a 1st mover in a new industry with no history of VC backing, and like all start-ups, financing was a struggle in the company's first few years, leading to some employee churn and frustration. Additionally, the company's middle management often had conflicts with executive management that caused strife and confusion among a number of its junior staff, some who left and some who were let go. Things can change day to day. Completely new directions can be announced. It can feel like a roller-coaster. This is not the place for someone who finds comfort in routine, well defined rules and processes or a predictable future.