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January 29, 2026

What SpaceX Means for Hiring in Tech

SpaceX, IPO Fever, and the Hiring Avalanche Ahead

There’s something electric in the air—and it’s not just SpaceX launching rockets or broadband satellites. According to multiple reports, Elon’s second crown jewel is prepping for a blockbuster IPO in 2026, potentially at a stratospheric $1.5 trillion valuation. That's trillion with a T, and yeah, we’re all feeling the tremors already.

The secondary markets have been buzzing louder than a Tesla Supercharger. Insider shares are flying off digital shelves. VCs are smirking again. And if you’re a founder, CTO, or anyone whose job involves hiring brilliant humans—strap in. Because once the IPO lid pops off at that scale, the fallout will hit your team whether you want it or not.

A Trillion-Dollar Signal to the Market

IPO drought? What IPO drought?

SpaceX’s public debut will be more than a financial event. It’s a psychological reset for the entire tech ecosystem. Just like Facebook and Alibaba’s IPOs sparked tech hiring booms in their wake, SpaceX’s listing could ignite a general return to growth, risk-taking and, oh yes—hiring aggression on steroids.

Here’s what will follow:

Late-stage giants like Stripe, OpenAI and Databricks will accelerate their IPO timelines to ride the euphoria.
Early-stage VCs will loosen the purse strings, pushing founders to hire faster and lean into growth again.
Employee stock options get sexy again, making your lead SRE or ML engineer suddenly itchy for ‘a bigger outcome.’

Translation? Resignations will rise. Counteroffers will multiply. And if your employer brand hasn’t been hit with a Red Bull... good luck.

Your Top Talent Is Watching—And Plotting

Let’s not kid ourselves. Even your most loyal tech leads are watching this unfold from their Slack sidebars. Because nothing tunes up career FOMO quite like reading that SpaceX insiders just minted a modest few dozen million pulling forward some equity.

This is what I call the "Cascade Effect of Liquidity Lust". Smart operators clock the early tremors. They look up from sprint planning and ask, quietly: “Maybe it’s time to update the old LinkedIn?”.

Your competitors—especially sharp, well-funded scaleups—will weaponise this appetite with laser-fast recruitment, juicy incentive packages, and the kind of mission-driven storytelling that makes ‘replatforming legacy infra’ suddenly sound flat.

If you manage brilliant talent, remember this: you’re not just competing on salary. You’re competing on aspiration. And Elon just dropped the mic.

Fast Growth ≠ Fast Hiring (Not Without Scars)

It’s tempting to think: “Fine, we’ll just hire like crazy too.” But most scale-ups I advise already have wounds from their last hiring boom. Too many rushed choices. Too little rigour. Too many ‘culture fits’ who actually just cloned the same backslapping energy.

Here’s the truth bomb: when everyone is scaling fast, that’s when hiring errors get most expensive. The difference between a £110k Staff Engineer who 10x’s velocity, and one who quietly slows down the roadmap? Millions.

Instead of hiring reactively, use this moment to build a recruitment attack plan before the real scramble starts.

Ask yourself (and your leadership):

Which roles will truly impact our next milestone?
Which hires can we stage, delay, or re-scope?
Where are we risking ‘panic-hiring’ to keep up with peers?
Is our hiring process built to compete—fast, but thorough?

The Smart Play for Founders & CTOs Right Now

Here’s my spicy take: The next 12 months are your advantage window. Not a time to chase, but to prepare.

While everyone else is still watching SpaceX memes on X, you could be:

Revamping your tech hiring pitch. You’re not just solving engineering problems—you’re building futures. Tell that story.
Refining your outreach strategy. Don’t outsource your top hires to luck, LinkedIn ads, or ‘just posting it on our careers page’.
Partnering with specialist recruiters (hi 👋) who know how to go beyond the rolodex of usual suspects.

The next war is for mission-aligned, impact-hungry, exit-savvy technologists. Not just coders. Not just nice people. Think: engineers who want to help you go to Mars... or at least your Series C.

Conclusion: Prepare for Lift-Off or Get Burned

SpaceX going public is more than a financial headline—it’s a starter pistol for the next phase of tech hiring intensity. The secondaries are already snapping. The FOMO is building. And the smartest companies are already moving.

If you lead hiring, the message is simple: you can’t afford to sleepwalk into this cycle.

Because when the IPO wave hits, and every tech company starts hiring like it’s 2021 again, you’ll either be ahead of the curve—or caught flat-footed watching your best engineer hand in notice the same week their mate joins OpenAI.

Your move.

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