Agile Employee Spotlight | Sarah Endres
Meet the Crew: The People Behind the Hardware
From a WSSW Tour to the Agile Team: One Durango Connection, One Unexpected Career Path
In 2024, Sarah Endres walked through the doors of Agile Space Industries as a West Slope Startup Week participant. She was curious about the companies in her community and was exploring what a career pivot into engineering might look like.
Today, she walks through those same doors as an Agile employee.
Sarah is now a Quality Inspector at Agile, where she conducts dimensional inspections on hardware manufactured by Agile and documentation inspections on hardware purchased from outside vendors. But her path to Agile started with a simple decision: sign up for a local event and take a tour.
Where curiosity meets opportunity
West Slope Startup Week brings together entrepreneurs, business leaders, creatives, and community members for events, educational sessions, and opportunities to learn more about the businesses and ideas taking shape across the region.
For Agile, WSSW is an opportunity to open its doors and give the Durango community a closer look at the work happening inside a local aerospace company.
That's exactly what drew Sarah to Agile's WSSW tour.
In 2024, Sarah was running her own business as a technical editor while exploring a career pivot into engineering. She had started researching engineering companies in Durango when she discovered Agile.
“I was pretty amazed to learn that we had a rocket engineering company right in our backyard,” Sarah said.
When she saw that Agile was offering a public tour through WSSW, she jumped at the chance to see what was happening inside.
From the tour to the team
Before the tour, Sarah's knowledge of Agile came primarily from the company's website, and her understanding of the broader space industry was limited.
That changed when she stepped into Agile's manufacturing center.
Her expectations of aerospace had been shaped largely by images of massive clean rooms, giant boosters, telescopes and Mars rovers. Agile looked a little different.
“To my untrained eye, stepping into Agile’s manufacturing center looked a little like organized chaos,” Sarah said.
During the tour, Director of Manufacturing Ben Turner passed around examples of Agile hardware and explained how additive manufacturing allows the company to move quickly from design to the test stand.
One moment in particular stuck with Sarah. As the group walked through the clean room area, she saw an Agile inspector examining a 3D-printed piece of hardware under a microscope at 400x magnification. Ben explained that the tiny holes being measured were roughly the diameter of a couple of human hairs.
“It was a fascinating piece of equipment and very cool to see what this hunk of metal looked like at that much magnification.”
The tour also gave Sarah an opportunity to ask a question that would ultimately change the direction of her career.
She had noticed that Agile was hiring for a quality inspector position. At the end of the tour, she approached Ben and explained that she was considering a career change.
“I was very upfront that I didn’t have any directly relevant experience, but I thought my aptitudes might be a good fit,” Sarah said.
Ben encouraged her to apply.
“So, I did!”
That conversation helped turn a WSSW tour into something much bigger: a new career path.
Seeing Agile from the inside
Now that Sarah is part of the Agile team, she has a different perspective on the “organized chaos” she saw during her first visit.
From the inside, she sees the structure behind Agile's ability to move quickly.
“There are all the procedures that guide the work and the flow of hardware through logical checkpoints throughout the manufacturing process.”
She has also discovered that people are a big part of what makes Agile special.
“One thing I appreciate about Agile is that people live in Durango because we love the outdoors and don’t want work to make up our entire identity,” Sarah said.
A reason to show up
Sarah's story is one example of what can happen when people take the opportunity to explore something unfamiliar.
For her, WSSW provided a way to learn about local businesses, meet business leaders, and test the waters on a potential career change.
“WSSW is great for networking and learning from business leaders in La Plata County, and the opportunity for me to explore a career change was invaluable.”
From Community to Cosmos
West Slope Startup Week returns to Durango Oct. 5-9, 2026, and Agile will once again open its doors to WSSW attendees.
On Tuesday, Oct. 6, Agile will host “From Community to Cosmos: An Inside Look at Agile Space Industries” from 9 to 10:30 a.m. at its headquarters at 820 Airport Road. Led by COO David Cuthbertson and Director of Manufacturing Ben Turner, the tour will give attendees a behind-the-scenes look at Agile’s propulsion technology, metal additive manufacturing, and in-house testing capabilities.
The tour is free, though registration is required. Space is limited, and participation requires U.S. citizenship and completion of Agile’s registration process.
For Sarah, opportunities like this are a chance for the Durango community to discover what is happening in its own backyard.
“I’m proud that Durango plays a role in space exploration and think everyone who lives here should get to meet their friendly neighborhood rocket engineers.”
She also hopes her experience encourages people who may not see themselves as obvious candidates for careers in engineering or manufacturing.
“There are lots of ways to break into the engineering/manufacturing industry without having to go back to school for an expensive and intensive degree, and my previous work experience has been useful in my role here,” Sarah said.
Her advice?
“The answer is always no if you don’t ask.”
