Firefly touches down in Marble Falls to talk jobs, youth opportunities
Firefly Aerospace Chief Operating Officer Dan Fermon gives a presentation on the company’s current status to a packed audience at the September Marble Falls/Highland Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce business luncheon. Staff photo by Dakota Morrissiey
Firefly Aerospace is growing rapidly, and it wants to take Burnet County along for the ride. The space firm was the latest guest at the Marble Falls/Highland Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce monthly business luncheon and shared some stellar statistics about the future of the space industry in Central Texas and the opportunities available for the local workforce and youth.
Firefly, a space and defense technology company headquartered in Cedar Park, has a 200-acre manufacturing and testing facility in the northeast Burnet County community of Briggs. The company has been around for about eight years, but it recently rose to international prominence when it completed the first-ever fully successful commercial landing on the moon in March.
As of late August, Firefly has over 800 employees company wide, with 371 of them in Burnet County, filling a variety of roles from welder and machinist to software engineer and rocket scientist. There’s no end in sight to the growth, with over 100 job openings, 50 of which are stationed between Briggs and Bertram.
“Our company, specifically, is increasing our employee population,” Firefly Marketing Specialist Alexandra Chavez told DailyTrib.com at the chamber luncheon. “We’re not looking to stop anytime soon.”
The hiring surge can be attributed to the massive contracts and customers the space firm has recently acquired. Firefly has three more missions to the moon on the docket, along with several rocket launches and orbital vehicle tests, all for space industry and technology titans like the U.S. Space Force, NASA, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and L3Harris.
The company will likely continue its expansion, as it just went public in August, raising over $600 million in funding.
Firefly Chief Operating Officer Dan Fermon, who gave the presentation to the Marble Falls chamber on Tuesday, Sept. 2, made it clear the company wants to be part of the Highland Lakes community.
“We definitely are passionate about having strong partnerships with schools, and we want to do that with Marble Falls as well,” he said. “We want to share what we have going on and what we do to make sure we are good stewards and good community members. That is extremely important to us.”
Firefly offers summer internships for college students at its Briggs site and Cedar Park headquarters as well as tours of its facilities, presentations, classroom visits, and more to grade school students.
No events have yet been scheduled with local school districts, but similar programs have been held in the Leander and Florence school districts.
Learn more about Firefly Aerospace’s community involvement by sending an inquiry to the company online and selecting “STEM/Community Inquiry” in the dropdown menu under “I’m Interested In.”