Join the networkStart a conversation

Sectors

Where Terra works

Terra works where the science is genuinely difficult and the talent market is genuinely thin. Depth in a sector is not a marketing claim. It is knowing which adjacent industry trained the person you need, and being able to hold a credible conversation with them on the first call.

Advanced Energy

Nuclear fission and fusion, geothermal, hydrogen and long-duration storage. Generation technologies being built at scale for the first time in decades.

What makes hiring hard here

The specialist pools are genuinely small, in some disciplines a few dozen people worldwide. The strongest candidates are embedded in national laboratories, incumbents or defence programmes, they are not reading job boards, and they will interrogate the physics before they consider the equity.

Roles Terra supports

  • Reactor, plasma and thermal systems engineering
  • Power electronics and high-voltage systems
  • Subsurface, drilling and reservoir engineering
  • Licensing, regulatory affairs and nuclear quality
  • Head of Manufacturing and supply chain leadership

Adjacent talent markets

  • Oil, gas and drilling services
  • National laboratories and academic plasma physics
  • Naval nuclear and defence
  • Utility-scale power development
  • Semiconductor and pulsed-power equipment

Selected client and portfolio experience

  • Kairos Power
  • Fervo Energy
  • Electric Hydrogen
  • Antora Energy
  • Fourth Power
  • Xcimer Energy

Industrial Decarbonization and Carbon Removal

Direct air capture, mineralization, low-carbon cement and steel, and the industrial processes being rebuilt from the chemistry up.

What makes hiring hard here

The technology is young enough that almost nobody has done the exact job before. Companies need people who can hold laboratory chemistry and industrial plant economics in the same head, and who are comfortable being the first to attempt something at scale.

Roles Terra supports

  • VP Engineering and Head of Process Engineering
  • Plant and commissioning leadership
  • Process chemistry and materials science
  • MRV, carbon accounting and policy
  • Project development and offtake

Adjacent talent markets

  • Industrial gases
  • Chemical and petrochemical process engineering
  • Cement, lime and mining
  • Water treatment
  • National laboratories

Selected client and portfolio experience

  • Heirloom Carbon
  • Brimstone
  • Twelve
  • Terraform Industries

Advanced Manufacturing and Materials

Advanced materials, additive and precision manufacturing, and the hard problem of turning a working prototype into a repeatable product.

What makes hiring hard here

This is where most hard-tech companies stall. The people who can industrialize a novel process are a different population from the people who invented it, and they are usually inside large manufacturers who spent twenty years training them.

Roles Terra supports

  • Head of Manufacturing and Manufacturing Engineering
  • Materials science and metallurgy
  • Quality, reliability and test engineering
  • Supply chain and strategic sourcing
  • Industrialization and NPI leadership

Adjacent talent markets

  • Automotive and EV manufacturing
  • Aerospace primes and tier-one suppliers
  • Medical device and semiconductor fabrication
  • Contract manufacturing
  • Speciality chemicals and ceramics

Selected client and portfolio experience

  • Seurat
  • Brimstone
  • Geoship

Aerospace and Frontier Systems

Launch, satellites, electric and hydrogen aviation, robotics, and the systems companies operating at the edge of what is currently possible.

What makes hiring hard here

Extreme reliability requirements, security clearance constraints and a candidate population that has usually chosen mission over compensation. They will interrogate the technical claims long before the offer, and a vague answer ends the conversation.

Roles Terra supports

  • Systems, GNC and avionics engineering
  • Propulsion and structures
  • Flight test and certification
  • Autonomy and robotics software
  • Programme and mission leadership

Adjacent talent markets

  • Launch and space primes
  • Defence and government contractors
  • Commercial aviation and certification bodies
  • Autonomous vehicles
  • High-reliability embedded systems

Selected client and portfolio experience

  • Heart Aerospace

Electrification and Climate Infrastructure

Home and industrial electrification, grid software and hardware, transmission, and the physical infrastructure the energy transition runs on.

What makes hiring hard here

These companies sit between software velocity and utility timelines and need people fluent in both. Interconnection and regulatory expertise is scarce, and the commercial roles demand real technical literacy to be taken seriously by a utility counterparty.

Roles Terra supports

  • Power electronics and embedded hardware
  • Grid software, DERMS and energy markets
  • Interconnection, permitting and regulatory affairs
  • Field operations and installation leadership
  • Commercial and utility partnerships

Adjacent talent markets

  • Utilities and ISOs
  • Solar, storage and EV charging
  • Industrial automation and controls
  • Building systems and HVAC
  • Energy trading and project finance

Selected client and portfolio experience

  • SPAN

Hiring somewhere on this map?

Tell us the role and we will tell you honestly where the talent sits, and what it would take to reach them.

Discuss a critical hire