Careers

My name is Jeroen van der Velden and I work as a hardware design engineer at Celestia-STS, a role I took on in early 2016.  Before then, I worked with the company when it was known as Satellite Services BV, or simply SSBV, for six years, until it was acquired by the Celestia Group and changed its name to Celestia-STS in 2016.

When I started as a junior hardware engineer, I thought I would be doing schematic entry and routing/layout work, day in day out. I soon found out that being a hardware engineer involves far more than simply arranging components in schematic sheets. On any given day as a hardware engineer at Celestia, I can be doing everything from customer requirement analyses and circuit design right up to design validation and documentation, it’s so varied.

With what I know now, the role turned out to be far more than I imagined, if I’m honest. All these different tasks and interaction with firmware, software and mechanical engineers, to name just a few, make the job much more interesting and exciting. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

I’ve had many great days here, but the best one was when we heard that SSBV was going to continue as Celestia-STS after being bought by the business.  SSBV had a great core team delivering good work with a smile. Now I find it fantastic that I can do many more interesting and challenging projects with this group of people.

With colleagues we love to talk about foreign food, Indian food in particular, habits and cultures. There are many people from lots of different parts of the world working at Celestia-STS and it is fascinating to see how all these different cultures blend in just fine and how everyone works well really together.

At Celestia-STS, everybody feels that details matter. When it comes to circuit design, you have to look beyond the obvious. For instance, a certain interface requirement might look easy to implement at first but can turn out to be surprisingly complex when all interfacing parties and their requirements are considered. The variety, and facing a new challenge everyday, are just two of the things that make working here so rewarding.

I’m Tosin Babarinde and I’m an RF or Radio Frequency Engineer who recently joined Celestia Antwerp.

The day I attended the technical interview was the first time I visited Celestia Antwerp’s facilities. I was left in awe by the highly driven team and all the excellent and challenging projects they have accomplished.

I genuinely appreciate my job here, but I have happy memories of the day I started with the organisation as it made such a positive impression on me and gave me a fresh start.

One of the most important lessons I take from Celestia Antwerp is that product development must truly be “genuine”. I wanted to move into product development and be able to utilise my background in academic research. This, I believe, is exactly Celestia Antwerp’s approach.

I am pleased to see that initiatives my company has contributed to are beneficial to clients in sectors such as space, transportation, aviation, agriculture and defence. My job is also highly varied; this month, we had meetings with project owners including ESA representatives, got the opportunity to maintain INDRA equipment, and discovered that Celestia Antwerp helped NASA’s Artemis get off the ground.

I have a wide range of conversations with my colleagues, not just about work, exchanging ideas and problem solving. The topics we discuss span sport and technology news to international cuisine. I have also picked up a few words and phrases in Dutch and French.

Celestia Antwerp warmly welcomes you. In this company, you can gain practical experience and develop your skills and abilities. You can also improve the aerospace, aviation and a wealth of other industries that depend on the solutions the company creates, whilst enjoying a varied and fulfilled career.

I’m Magdy Abdel and I’ve been with Celestia Antwerp for about two years as a Software Engineer.

Since I had no prior experience, I imagined that any company would be a very formal setting where everything was managed ‘by the book’. My eyes have been opened, and Celestia Antwerp has demonstrated that work is far more than that and can balance serious and enjoyable elements.

As soon as I joined, I saw that everyone here is incredibly helpful and eager to help one another. Everyone contributes in equal measure, because we are all in this together. There is a great rapport amongst us, with people stepping in to assist if something does not go as expected.

We also work in the space industry, which is a distinct field in itself with many fascinating people in it. My colleagues teach me a lot at work. Every day is an opportunity for me to learn and advance. It is made even more worthwhile by my colleagues.

During breaks, we discuss a wide range of topics. I enjoy hearing about past projects from my colleagues who have more experience in the industry than I have, as well as sharing jokes and personal conversations. Chats like these often have remarkable moments in the details they bring.

I am fortunate to work with talented individuals with a lot of insight and commitment who love what they do.  I find it easy to talk to my manager, the CEO.  There are monthly lunches where the simple “how are you feeling?” question is frequently asked.  We also do team building exercises and there is a lot of focus on the team, not just the company.

Following your aspirations is one of the most important things I’ve been able to do at Celestia Antwerp. I’ve actually been dreaming of working in the space industry since I was a young child, and now I’m here.

As a software engineer, I go home happy when I have resolved bugs or when I have created something new. Of course, that’s not always the case, but then my colleagues are there to put a smile on my face.  Here, you can be yourself, follow your passions, and not be hesitant to ask questions.

Because our influence extends beyond a nation or area, I am proud of the work I do. We influence several nations, businesses, and the entire world. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll explore the universe beyond the confines of our tiny globe.

Jaap van der Plas is my name and I am the Head of Assembly at Celestia-STS.  We put together custom mainframes, racks, harnesses and PCBs. I’ve spent 16 years working for Celestia, six at Celestia-STS and 10 at SSBV, the business’ previous incarnation.

When I applied for the job, I assumed it would simply involve assembly labour, such as soldering PCBs. In fact, it turned out to be an extremely flexible role entailing a wide variety of tasks that I really enjoy. Every day is different. It’s also wonderful that you can share your knowledge with your colleagues about the best ways to complete a task. You are given a great deal of freedom as well as accountability.

Very soon after joining, I realised that it wasn’t just about speed, something which was always drummed into me where I worked before where the focus was all about completing more tasks in a single day. Here, I observed that the important thing was not speed but rather the calibre of your work. We frequently create machinery that must operate continuously, so it is crucial that your work is exceptionally precise and that you are confident in your actions. Quality comes way ahead of quantity.

One day which ranks as one of the best I have had is when we were asked to visit ESA. It was an exciting day and we thought the client really valued the job we had done.  They took their time, showing us round all their facilities right down to the clean room!

I always have a good feeling when I get home, but it’s especially good when I have completed one of my favourite tasks of assembling a (prototype) PCB. I enjoy watching them develop into the finished result. When you realise that they can be made up of several hundred tiny components, it can be rather difficult. Consequently, using a microscope is essential! And when I finally verify that everything functions as intended or when I finish a mainframe and everything looks perfect, I am extremely proud of my work, especially when a colleague or my manager compliments me.

It is great to know that everyone in the organisation is prepared to assist you if you are new to the team but not particularly experienced in this line of work. We all collaborate. And you are part of the Celestia family from day one.

My name is Laura Liessens and I am Finance & HR Officer at Celestia Antwerp.

I started my journey at the company in 2013, before the business became part of the Celestia Group, so I was here at the very start of Celestia Antwerp, which came into being at the end of 2019. This was a fantastic time to be here because there was a fresh start, new goals plus a strong and friendly team, all of which created the feeling of impetus and excitement.  We really do operate as one team. Although there were some challenges, as there always are when different businesses merge, we were all very motivated to create fresh successes, working with mutual trust and respect as our main values. What I learned from that is that challenges can open new doors.

At first, my job felt quite administrative in nature, and although in truth there are other parts of my role that I prefer, I’ve been working here for almost 10 years now. The reason for this is that at Celestia Antwerp you can follow your own path to find the role which fits you and the company best. The business works hard to keep its people motivated in their job – it’s good for the company and good for the people themselves. It’s a win-win situation. On top of that, there is of course a lot more than the job itself. It’s the whole package we get at Celestia Antwerp which keeps us motivated.

My colleagues are very important to me. We are all human, ‘’living’’ together at work and we need to work well together every day. We see our colleagues more than the people we see at home, so for me personally it’s important you have good rapport and dialogue with the people you work with. When I do something good for the company and for my colleagues, I go home happy. Seeing others happy, makes me happy too and I’m proud when I can give any kind of support to my colleagues when they need it.

I truly feel that Celestia engages with and supports their people. We can have conversations about anything because there is always someone who listens to what concerns us. People are open-minded and have respect for each other, even though we are all very different characters. So to anyone new joining our team, I would simply say just to be yourself.

I’m İrem Kaki and I was a student intern with Celestia UK last summer.

Doing an internship was a very rewarding experience as a third year engineering science student approaching my fourth year at Oxford University because it introduced me to the working culture of a small but growing company and provided good industry insight.

Having completed my third year modules on analogue and digital circuits, communications and information engineering, this was a perfect place to see these abstract concepts in action. For me to understand what is going on, learn more and prove useful as an intern, I needed a solid foundation which I believe my third year modules provided, so this is a position that is very well suited for engineering students in their third year summer.

The company itself was a wonderful place to work. The people are all incredibly smart, helpful and very lovely. As interns, our questions never went unanswered and we were given projects that have the potential to be genuinely impactful rather than being stuck doing busywork.  One of the advantages of working in a small company was that we had the opportunity to observe ongoing projects really closely in the lab spaces and even got to experiment ourselves.

The office is situated in the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, which is THE place to be for anyone interested in satcoms or space, and a generally great campus. On top of all of that, we had the pleasure of being invited to the annual company event in Edinburgh which was absolutely incredible and another great way to meet and work with the team.

This internship helped me solidify my understanding of communications and improve my MATLAB & Git skills. I would recommend anyone who is curious about communications and/or likes a bit of coding to apply for one of these internships.