You do know that most group supervisors have graduate degrees right? (At least at JPL, not sure about other NASA centers). Seniority tends to be based on your h

You do know that most group supervisors have graduate degrees right? (At least at JPL, not sure about other NASA centers). Seniority tends to be based on your highest level of education (obviously there are exceptions - but exceptions are exceptions because they're rare, not the norm). There's no "single PhDless engineer" who engineers a whole spacecraft.