I have 15+ years of experience in different software engineering roles, from pure IC type to managerial. My experience has been mostly consulting which means I’ve worked in a variety of industries (finance, research, publishing, government, etc). I’d like to get into the aerospace industry, particularly rocket building companies (although not limited to that). I think I have a very good profile but so far I’ve struck out at every single application at the get-go, not even a call for an interview. I’m trying to gage what companies in this industry look for so I can try and tailor my application accordingly, any thoughts?

My only guess so far so as to why I haven’t been lucky is that my experience has mostly been with JVM-languages while these companies seem to favour C/C++. However, that feels like a weak reason because I believe that, at this level of experience, the engineering fundamentals are independent of the language and one can change framework with relative ease (as I’ve done several times during my career).