Star Driver

... In this story, unpretentious but super-talented astronomer/ pilot Mike Call gets "downsized" (you'll see by his description of his stature why that's a pun) by a previous employer and lands a job in a small industry that has just stumbled upon a revolutionary invention with industrial and space flight implications. Not only that--Call finds a bona-fide nice girl as a love interest. There are some tense moments involving industrial espionage--remember, this story was written back when it wasn't trendy to see "the Feds" as villains yet. Call me a reactionary (and I'll thank you for the compliment), but it's great to read a story that has good guys as heroes rather than dysfunctional anti-heroes.

Good guy with just a Master's degree in astronomy gets laid off from his job since he doesn't have the Ph.D. union card. He does job search and gets hired for interesting research and development job that requires his abilities as engineer, astronomer, and pilot. I still like to re-read it occasionally.