The talent solution that’s right in front of you


The United States is not creating enough domestic aerospace talent to meet the industry’s demand. Plenty of non-American students at U.S. universities are eager to stay after graduation and contribute to the country’s economy, but relatively few employers take them up on it. What’s blocking the way? Misperceptions about the law are a big part of the problem. Young-Young Shen, Antoine Paletta and Robert C. Winn explain.

Young-Young Shen co-founded AIAA’s International Students and Professionals in Aerospace working group in 2023. He is a guidance, navigation, and control engineer at MDA Space in Brampton, Ontario, Canada. He holds a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering sciences from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Antoine Paletta co-founded AIAA’s ISPA working group in 2023 with Young-Young. He is a Canadian and French dual citizen and a flight dynamics engineer at Loft Orbital in Toulouse, France. He holds a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech.

Robert C. Winn is a mechanical and forensic aeronautical engineer and principal emeritus of Engineering Systems Inc. based in Colorado Springs. He has been an expert witness in numerous aircraft accident legal actions. He was a U.S. Air Force instructor pilot and taught aeronautical engineering at the U.S. Air Force Academy. He holds a Ph.D. from Colorado State University and is an AIAA fellow.


The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 2015 that the U.S. aerospace industry suffers from chronic worker shortages “due to citizenship and security clearance requirements.” This shortage persists and shows no signs of abating. The Aerospace Industries Association predicted in 2023 that “finding enough qualified talent to support demand growth amid retirements” will be “one of the biggest risks executives face” for years to come.

In other industries, such shortages are addressed by hiring foreign workers to fill the gap. In the aerospace industry, however, employers have not rushed to hire the many non-American graduates of aerospace engineering programs in the United States, to the detriment of both the industry and these graduates.

Consider Antoine Marin, a specialist in cislunar mission architectures and a friend of the authors. He came to the United States from France in 2022 and graduated from Georgia Tech in 2024 with a master’s degree in aerospace engineering.

“When I came to the U.S., I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to explore all the possibilities here — everything looks so open,’” says Marin. However, he soon learned that, because he was not a “U.S. person” — a term referring to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and certain refugees and asylees — employment possibilities were few and far between. This was despite the fact that as a STEM student, he would have had authorization to work in the U.S. for up to three years on his student visa once he graduated. Ultimately, he found no relevant job openings among those listed as available to non-U.S. persons. So, he decided that his best option was to return to France.

Or Riccardo Calaon, also a friend of ours. He came to the U.S. from Italy in 2021 to pursue a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. His reasons for coming went beyond professional development.

“I consider myself to have had the American Dream,” says Calaon. “I wanted to do a Ph.D. in the U.S. to open up more opportunities for myself [and] work on things I’m interested in that I didn’t get to work on back home. But I also wanted to live in the U.S. for a while and experience the culture there.”

An accomplished scholar who counts among his accolades the prestigious U.S. Fulbright scholarship along with numerous other internationally and nationally recognized scholarships and fellowships, Calaon was unable to secure a job offer in the U.S. In some cases, conversations with employers would seem to stop abruptly as soon as he disclosed his non-U.S. person status. And he could not simply become a U.S. person — doing so could require years of paperwork and typically requires sponsorship from a U.S. employer in the first place.

As his graduation date neared, Calaon began to apply for jobs back home. “As soon as I started looking in Italy, it felt like companies were throwing jobs at me.”

Calaon returned to Italy in September 2024 and finished the requirements for his degree remotely.

Marin and Calaon are not alone. Approximately 50% of students enrolled in engineering graduate programs in 2022 were not U.S. persons, according to data compiled by the Council of Graduate Schools. Many of them, like Calaon, graduated with doctoral degrees. Only a small handful of those engineers who majored in aerospace succeeded in finding job placements in the U.S. in their major field of study. The remainder likely returned to their home countries after finding out late in their educational journeys that they were trapped in a catch-22: Most employers in the U.S. aerospace industry are unwilling to hire them because they are not U.S. persons, but becoming a U.S. person requires employer sponsorship. That is a lot of talent that was nurtured in the U.S. but did not end up helping the U.S. aerospace industry.

It is true that American defense contractors are very limited in who they can hire due to security clearance requirements. However, many of those in the country’s aerospace industry don’t do work that requires a clearance. Also, a common misconception is that the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) prohibit regulated businesses from employing foreign nationals. In reality: “Neither the ITAR nor the EAR outright prohibits a U.S. company in the space industry from hiring a foreign person,” says attorney Jack Shelton, a founding partner at Aegis Space Law. “Rather, these regulations provide that before releasing export-controlled information to such foreign persons, the U.S. company might need a license from the State Department or the Commerce Department.”

He continues: “In some instances, a license might not even be required, or a licensing exception might be available, depending on the classification of the information to be shared and the nationality or country of permanent residence of the foreign person.”

Such licenses are referred to as “deemed export” licenses, because technical data is deemed to have been exported to a foreign person without the data leaving the United States. Applying for and receiving such a license is not nearly as onerous, time-consuming or risky as one might think.

“It involves a bit of paperwork and usually a few months for the government to process,” Shelton says.

Often, the turnaround time on a license application is even shorter. In fact, in 2021, an EAR license application took an average of 33 days to process, and in 2022 only 0.6% of the applications were denied a license. There is no fee to apply for a license, except that applying for an ITAR license requires the business to be registered with the State Department, which incurs a one-time nominal fee. Furthermore, in October 2024, the Department of State and the Department of Commerce announced a relaxation of export control rules on a wide range of technologies used in the space industry, including new license exceptions for many such technologies.

Once a license is in place, a number of options exist for a non-U.S. person candidate to obtain work authorization in the U.S., many of which are commonly used by other industries to hire high-skilled foreign workers. These include post-completion Optional Practical Training, or OPT, authorizations, which permit new graduates to work while still on their student visas, or H-1B visas, a common type of work visa. Both of these provide time for the employer and the employee to work together to apply for a permanent residency permit — also known as a “green card” — for the employee, which, when received, grants the employee U.S. person status.

To address this mismatch between demand and supply, Young-Young and Antoine founded the International Students and Professionals in Aerospace working group under AIAA’s International Activities Group. Our working group is developing the “Guide to Hiring International Talent in the US Aerospace Industry,” to be published by ISPA soon. It will be designed for businesses that would like to gain an advantage in talent acquisition over their competitors by opening their vacancies to the many highly qualified foreign national graduates that would otherwise leave the country every year. It dispels the many myths surrounding employment of foreign nationals and provides guidance and resources for the deemed export licensing process. A growing number of companies are already finding success by employing a diverse, international staff, particularly in the commercial space sector, and the guide will be a blueprint for how other businesses can join them.

The present situation represents a substantial missed opportunity for aerospace businesses and international engineers and graduating students alike. It’s time to make regulation-compliant hiring of international talent the norm in the U.S. aerospace industry.

Aerospace America publishes a rich variety of opinions relevant to the future of aerospace. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of our publisher, AIAA.

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Careers
Two people working inside an aircraft cockpit; one is adjusting controls overhead, and the other is inspecting below the panels.
In one example of the aerospace industry’s demand for workers, Boeing in 2024 estimated that the commercial aviation industry will need 674,000 new pilots, 716,000 new maintenance technicians and 980,000 new cabin crew members. Credit: Boeing

The talent solution that’s right in front of you