NASA reviews

4.4

86% would recommend to a friend

(1,790 total reviews)
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Charles F. Bolden, Jr.

83% approve of CEO

59% positive business outlook

NASA has an employee rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars, based on 1,790 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The NASA employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Gobierno y administración pública industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

2K reviews
2.0
Jun 11, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great toys, motivating mission. A very talented and dedicated workforce. The standard benefits of working for the federal government if that's important to you -- health care, pension, and you can't be fired.

Cons

NASA, despite it's reputation amongst those who have never worked with it, is primarily a government bureaucracy. It is not the organization that gave us Apollo. The technology used in mainline spacecraft development programs is many years behind the current state-of-the-art, due to an overly risk-averse, conservative, and bureaucratic approach to engineering & program management. Perhaps due to advanced age of most of the workers, there is tremendous resistance to any solution that isn't similar to what has been done in previous projects. Due to civil service protections and lack of new programs, there are few management or leadership opportunities for young engineers or new hires -- you must wait for many years before a position above you clears out before you can get a position that can "make a difference".

1.0
Feb 23, 2026

Not a good place to work

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It's always exciting to work on stuff that is planned to go to space. Furthering the goals of space exploration, human space flight and scientific discovery never gets old.

Cons

For a place that constantly talks about and promotes work/life balance, it seems to say "what life" and treat you like a cog in the machine, especially if you are on a high visibility program like Artemis. If you work on a smaller program, don't get too attached to it either, cause chances are it will get axed right when you're in the middle of it and then you're left with nothing to do for who knows how long until they can find more funding, and if they can't, they might just stick you in some undesirable job that you weren't hired to work in the first place, or look for reasons to cut you loose entirely. Nasa can't hold or manage it's funding to save it's life. Even the big program like Artemis (where all the money goes) probably won't carry out it's full program life cycle. There's very little coordination between programs. There's a constant ego flexing matches between government, contractors and OEM's to see who can make who look worse. When it comes to management sticking up for their employees in any situation, forget about it. They will say or do whatever it takes to cover their own behinds.

Viewing 100 - 102 of 1,790 Reviews

Glassdoor has 3,236 NASA reviews submitted anonymously by NASA employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if NASA is right for you.