Seventy workers at Kennedy Space Center are losing their jobs by November 30 as NASA pulls contracted work back in-house, a move that has already brought nearly 600 new federal employees onto the center's payroll this fall. The cuts fall on contractor Amentum's Base Operations and Spaceport Services division, known internally as BOSS, which handles infrastructure, facility maintenance and operational support across the spaceport.
Amentum will eliminate the positions effective November 30, according to talkoftitusville.com, which first reported that NASA plans to insource the BOSS division entirely. The affected roles span engineering, technician, planning, analyst and test-conductor positions, and 14 of the 70 workers are represented by a union, according to thespacecoastrocket.com. A more granular breakdown from the same report lists 15 engineering technicians, 13 electrical engineering positions, 13 other engineers and 11 test conductors among the cuts.
A Directive From the Top
The layoffs trace back to a workforce directive NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman issued on February 6, instructing center directors to identify outsourced technical and operational work and propose converting core roles to civil service positions, per the same report from thespacecoastrocket.com. The push is part of a broader effort Isaacman has described publicly. According to payloadspace.com, Isaacman has said NASA is rebalancing its workforce toward civil servants to bring more expertise in-house, a strategy intended to cut the agency's reliance on contractors in its core areas and potentially save an estimated $1 billion annually in overhead.
That doesn't mean contractors are being phased out entirely. Payloadspace.com reports that Isaacman's plan would still retain contractors for short-term programs, surge needs and lower-priority work rather than eliminate the contractor workforce altogether. Isaacman has framed the approach as building on industry's strengths rather than discarding them, saying NASA's reliance on industry is a strength but that the agency can improve how it achieves its objectives.
New Faces at the Center
The insourcing push is already visibly reshaping Kennedy's workforce. Kennedy Space Center officials posted video on September 21 showing nearly 600 new NASA civil servants taking their oaths of office, the space coast rocket report noted. The Orlando Sentinel reported that Taylor Hose became a NASA employee in September after almost seven years as a contractor, and that KSC Director Brian Hughes welcomed 150 new civilian employees at the center on October 5, saying the new hires will strengthen NASA's operations and mission support work.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, Amentum currently employs nearly 2,800 people at Kennedy Space Center across three separate contracts, and its workers support nearly every piece of hardware that enters the center — including operating the crawler transporter that carries Artemis rockets to and from the launch pad and providing the majority of the closeout crew that helped Artemis II astronauts into the Orion spacecraft. The Sentinel's reporting also details Kennedy's broader workforce: 2,079 civil servants, 5,868 contractors and 540 construction workers in fiscal year 2025, with private companies accounting for 9,214 employees on site out of a total population of 17,701.
Amentum's Other Contracts Keep Growing
Even as BOSS shrinks, Amentum's other Kennedy work is expanding. The company's $3.2 billion COMET contract — covering engineering, ground system development, spacecraft processing, and launch, landing and recovery operations for Artemis through 2033 — employs more than 2,100 Amentum workers performing flight integration and ground systems maintenance, per thespacecoastrocket.com. Amentum also employs about 130 people supplying liquid propellants to launch providers at Kennedy and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, according to the Sentinel, and the company recently held a May 1 hiring fair in Orlando seeking roughly 100 workers for the Artemis III, IV and V missions, a detail also reported by thespacecoastrocket.com.
Amentum told washingtontechnology.com that NASA has already begun hiring employees even while some contract modifications tied to the transition remain under negotiation. The company anticipates the insourcing initiative will cut its fiscal 2027 revenue by 3%, up from an earlier estimate of a 1% impact. Amentum had not issued a public comment about the Kennedy layoffs at the time talkoftitusville.com published its report.
Part of a Wider Industry Trend
The Kennedy cuts land amid a rough stretch for the broader job market. U.S. employers announced 97,006 job cuts in May, a 3% year-over-year increase and the highest May total since 2020, according to the talkoftitusville.com report. This isn't the first time Amentum has trimmed its Kennedy workforce either — the company filed a WARN notice in October 2022 covering 188 Kennedy Space Center employees, a far larger round of cuts than the current 70.
NASA's own messaging has tied the insourcing effort to its stated goal of rebuilding internal expertise. A NASA news release states that the agency continues to focus on rebuilding core competencies and insourcing contractors to civil servants where appropriate. Meanwhile, Isaacman told a congressional audience in April that he plans to move contractors in-house and hire subject-matter experts from private industry as part of the broader workforce initiative, according to dc.medill.northwestern.edu.
