SoCal Aerospace & Defense Hiring Report

What’s inside this issue

• The SoCal A&D Openings Index — a same-date count of 2,349 on-site A&D roles across 16 named employers, with 15 of 16 verified live from official career systems — not aggregators.
• A leadership change — Northrop Grumman overtakes SpaceX as the largest tracked employer at 811 combined openings, with the LA/OC corridor (1,333 roles) and the San Diego cluster (1,016) splitting the map.
• What the market pays — BLS wage benchmarks for SoCal aerospace and electronics engineers vs. national, and why San Diego’s electronics engineers out-earn its aerospace engineers.
• Contracts & the demand signal — the fresh ~$1.75B SDA missile-tracking award, the B-21 acceleration at Palmdale, and the national-security launch flow out of Hawthorne.
• Risk signals — the WARN watch — zero active California A&D WARN notices this period against 2,349 open roles, and what that means for the cleared-talent pool.

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