Rocket Lab Education
Inspiring and educating the next generation of space
Rocket Lab is committed to backing the next generation of aerospace experts through our Education Programs.
We're on a mission to:
Dedicated team members inspiring our communities to get excited about space and STEM.
Rocket Lab Space Ambassadors are individuals from all areas of our business who we train and support to conduct outreach activities with schools, colleges, and community organizations around the world.
All of Rocket Lab’s Education programs have Space Ambassadors at the heart of them, whether it’s through Rocket Club, our tutoring program, or visiting schools to run small group workshops or large scale learning experiences in schools and community spaces.
Space Educators
Elite groups of educators nurturing the next generation of space.
The Rocket Lab Space Educators program is a teacher accelerator, intended to provide resources and support to inspired educators who wish to use the context of space and space technologies in their classrooms.
Teachers from all subject areas receive support and resources create meaningful inter-disciplinary learning projects in collaboration with our Space Ambassadors, then Rocket Lab helps to share their efforts and innovation with schools around the world.
Rocket Club
The first industry-led rocketry program for young rocketeers.
Rocket Club makes model rocketry more accessible than ever. Over 10 weeks, kids aged 10-15 learn how to design, build, and launch their own low-powered rockets from scratch, learning meaningful skills and concepts in aerodynamics and digital technologies along the way.
Facilitated by our Space Ambassadors, this affordable after-school program is a blast, with students taking away the Rocket Club patch, the rocket they built and launched, and a lifelong passion for STEM learning.
Rocket Lab Tutoring
Bringing the stars within reach for young people in underserved communities.
Some young people have more barriers to reaching for the stars than others. To support them to break those barriers down, trained and vetted Rocket Lab Space Ambassadors volunteer to tutor small groups of high school seniors in Maths and Physics.
Aimed at Space Ambassador Schools with specific learning and community resourcing needs, Rocket Lab tutoring is intended to bridge the gap and bring the stars within reach for previously excluded communities.
A network of schools delivering Rocket Lab Education programs.
All of Rocket Lab’s Education programs are offered exclusively to Space Ambassador Schools — but it’s easy to become one! Sign up through your regional Space Ambassador School network to receive perks, resources, and opportunities to be involved with Rocket Lab’s education programs as they grow and develop.
Want to find out more? Contact us.
The kick stage for careers.
School is the first step, but what’s next? Rocket Lab offers multiple pathway and financial aid opportunities for students as they navigate their career paths from school to the stars. Click below to find out more.
Frequently Asked Questions
Great question, but there is no single answer. You should figure out what you want to do at Rocket Lab, or in the wider space industry, first. Do you want to help build the rockets of 2050 – or design them? Do you want to solve the challenges of guiding, navigating, and controlling spacecraft – or programming them to do that? Do you want to be a mission manager and help people send amazing technologies into space? Do you want to create the fuels of the future that get the next mission to the moon? Do you want to find and procure the materials, resources, and parts needed to put it all together? There are so many opportunities... and every one of them has multiple pathways!
Here's just some of the qualifications different team members hold:
- Bachelor of Engineering (Honours): Mechanical, Aerospace, Chemical, Software, Mechatronics, Electrical
- Bachelor of Science: Majors – Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biotechnology, Environmental Science, Data Science, Information Technology, Mathematical Modelling, Computer Science, Digital/Cybersecurity, Environmental Management, Geographic Information Science, Astronomy/Astrophysics
- Bachelors of Commerce or Liberal Arts: Communications, Accounting, Economics, Information Management, International Relations and Policy
- Bachelor of Laws (specialisation in Space Law)
- Vocational qualifications at all levels in mechanical, aviation, electrical, maritime, materials, and automotive engineering as well as IT and network engineering.
Some team members hold advanced degrees (Masters or PhD) in specific research areas relevant to our projects and missions.
Focus on what you enjoy learning about, and what inspires you. Watch some of our launches and information videos, and have a look at the available jobs we’re advertising for on our careers pages. Each one of these comes with qualification requirements, so that can give you an indication of what to study! Job titles across companies tend to be transferrable, so you can google the title to find out more about what it entails. If you’re at a Space Ambassador registered school, ask your teacher if you can have a Space Ambassador speak to your classes – all of our Space Ambassadors have diverse roles and backgrounds, and can speak authentically to the journey they took to become part of the Rocket Lab team.
You can follow us on social media, and join our mailing list! We love to share what we’re doing, whenever and wherever we can. If you are still at school, you can ask your teachers to register your school as a Space Ambassador School. This means your school gets the opportunity to have unique visits, activities, and resources provided by our Space Ambassador and Space Educator programs.
If you are an educator, you should apply to be a Space Educator. This is our teacher accelerator intended to support teachers to provide exciting space-centric learning activities, supported by our Space Ambassadors program.
We also have our after-school program, Rocket Club, where you can design, build, and launch your very own rocket with real-life rocket engineers.
The Rocket Lab Scholarship funds bright STEM stars for $20,000 towards their fees and a mentoring program. It’s only available to New Zealand students in Year 13, and while we accept applications from all students, our priority is to support Māori with ties to the Mahia/Wairoa region near Launch Complex 1.
The Rocket Lab Women’s Scholarship offers $10,000 towards the fees and course-related costs of one young woman or gender minority pursuing a career in aerospace.
You can learn more about and apply for these scholarships here. Other scholarships may be available depending on the course you want to take and the university you are applying to. Many such scholarships are listed on StudySpy.
You can find out about our internship programs at all global sites here. Due to supervision and security requirements, we do not offer internship or work experience programs for high school students.
Mathematics of some kind is always beneficial. Calculus is very important for engineering subjects, but statistics is important for most science subjects as well. At least one science subject between physics and chemistry are recommended, if not both. From there, it really depends on what you love doing. If you like making things, technology or trades subject options can offer helpful practical experience. English, Media Studies, Digital Technologies, or Geography are good subjects for learning how to communicate complex ideas – which is something everyone in our team needs to do, and some more than others. Artistic subjects such as DVC are good for learning how to visually communicate ideas and following design processes, which is very helpful if you want to be designing solutions for the space industry of the future.
However, high school is not just about preparing for a specific job. All of our team members have interesting lives and pathways beyond their Rocket Lab career, and taking subjects that inspire you and that you enjoy is often more helpful for your long-term career options as it gives you a chance to learn how you learn and interact with different people and tasks. You never know what you might learn or what skills you might develop by taking a history, health, or language class, and how it might help you find your place in space.
Maths is an integral part of solving problems, but don’t despair! Classroom mathematics can often be a different experience to the mathematical concepts you might use to solve problems while working in the space industry. How else do you think we can chart where Electron is and should go, and how to get there? How would we calculate weight distribution or mass flow rates for propulsion fuels?
If you’re struggling with learning mathematic concepts, there are lots of great online resources to support you through high school and beyond. Check out the Khan Academy and LearnCoach to get started – you might even end up enjoying it.
We have lots of ‘non-technical’ roles at Rocket Lab – we need lawyers, graphic designers, accountants, security guards, and administrative personnel, too – not to mention educators, media and marketing professionals, and video content producers. These roles all come with their own career pathways and technical expertise, but the one thing we share is a fascination with space and going there to make life better on earth. However, many of our ‘non-technical’ staff still use numbers, logic, and calculations every day to solve problems and find solutions to the challenges of the future!
It’s true that we have members of our team who started working for us without any post-secondary qualifications. However, it’s a good idea to make a plan that involves a clear pathway to where you want to go, depending on what you want to do. If you’re interested in building rockets, but don’t think university is for you, you might want to check out the Air New Zealand pre-trade courses or the Aeronautical Engineering qualifications offered by NMIT. There are also technical qualifications in electrical engineering and other infrastructure-related courses offered at technical institutions such as Manukau Institute of Technology. Sometimes, if there is a high demand for production staff, we offer places on our apprenticeship program – these aren’t offered very frequently, so keep a close eye on our careers pages if this interests you.
It’s possible to start your career at Rocket Lab with a 6-month course, a 2-year diploma, or a 4-year degree in Engineering – it all depends on where you want to start, and what kind of pathway is right for you. Here’s some of the qualifications that prepared our team for their roles:
Currently, we offer formal mentoring to our Rocket Lab Scholarship, Internship, and Apprenticeship candidates. If you are not a participant in these programs, we don’t yet have the resources to partner you with Rocket Lab team members. If you’re lucky enough to know someone who works at Rocket Lab, you are welcome to reach out individually for advice or to request their support. Many of our team volunteer their time to supporting young people who want to find their place in the space industry – they’re also very busy, though, so don’t be disheartened if you don’t receive a response.
Anything is possible, and you could be the first!
Not right now, but we have learned to never say never. Our focus is on making life better for humans right here on Earth by making space accessible to all. However, many of our team members share a dream of going to space one day!
First, we need to know you meet the criteria for the job you’re applying for. It is recommended that you meet all of the criteria listed on the job ad - but if you’re not sure about one or two items on the list, sometimes it’s still a good idea to apply. Keep in mind that when you apply for a job at Rocket Lab, we keep a track of how many jobs you’ve applied to and how many times you’ve applied for employment with us. It is often far more impactful to pick one or two roles that really interest you and that you’re qualified for, than to just try for everything and hope for the best! While of course we want to hire people who want to be part of the Rocket Lab team, it’s much more important to find people who are the right fit for the team and have the right skills and attitude for the job.
Please also bear in mind that Rocket Lab is restricted by ITAR in which nationalities we can hire. If you are not a citizen of New Zealand or the United States, check if your citizenship is compatible with ITAR (see ‘EAR favorable countries’ – you must be a citizen of one of these countries to be employed by Rocket Lab).
If you want to have an idea of the personal qualities we look for in future team members, have a look at our Rocket Lab Values.
Yes! We love to welcome young people on site to our facilities when we are able. However, you can probably imagine that with security and supervision requirements – and the fact that our priority is building and launching things to space! – this doesn’t happen every day. Visits are invite-only, and the best chance you have of being invited on a visit is to make sure you’re signed up to our mailing list, are following our social media channels, and that your school is registered as a Space Ambassador School.