The UK arm of the Belgian-headquartered RHEA Group, which provides space engineering, software and security expertise to the UK Space Agency, ESA and other clients from offices including NETPark in County Durham.
RHEA Group is a space and security engineering company. It supplies experts and software to space agencies, defence and security organisations. In the UK it works with the UK Space Agency, providing mission design, systems engineering and operations support of the kind it also supplies to the European Space Agency. One of its best-known tools is COMET, a concurrent model-based engineering tool that helps teams design complex space missions together. One article says ESA has cut mission development time and cost by 40 per cent using it. It also works on security, covering cyber and physical threats such as space debris, and has a pilot project using Earth observation data to track river pollution.
The group was founded in 1992 by three engineers in the Liege Science Park in Belgium, and its first contract came from ESA's operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany. A second client, EUMETSAT, followed in 1993. The group says it is privately owned, with over 750 staff in 11 countries, and managing director André Sincennes has led it since 2010. RHEA's published pages, including its 30th anniversary item, do not give a separate mission statement, though they stress innovation and meeting customers' expectations.
In the UK, a 2022 article says RHEA has three UK offices, including its newest at NETPark, the North East Technology Park in Sedgefield, County Durham, which it moved into in March 2022. The article does not name the other two, so we cannot confirm other locations. RHEA also took part in the North East Satellite Applications Centre of Excellence. The UK office is a small part of a group headquartered in Belgium, and the UK staff count was not given.
The sources speak of collaboration. Chief commercial officer John Bone said, "the thing that attracted us to NETPark, in particular, is the appetite for collaborative working". NETPark manager Janet Todd said she was delighted RHEA had chosen to open another UK office there. The article records RHEA's group size growing from about 350 people to over 700 over four years, which suggests a business that has been taking on many people. These are the company and partner's own words, not independent checks.
The jobs are a good fit for people who like mathematics, physics, engineering, software and data. They include systems and mission engineers, software developers, data scientists working on Earth observation, security and cyber specialists, and project managers, together with commercial, finance and support staff. Because it often places experts directly with space agencies, the work can involve being close to big space missions. RHEA's own website is the place to check current roles.
Website: rheagroup.com
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