Application close date:
Applications will be accepted on an ongoing basis until the requisition is closed.
We are seeking a skilled and self-directed Software Engineer III - Applied AI to join our enterprise search and AI team. You'll take meaningful ownership over the architecture and delivery of agentic, workflow-driven search and discovery platforms - powering enterprise knowledge graphs and AI-assisted retrieval systems that help Blue Origin teams find critical data in seconds.
At this level, you will drive technical decisions, mentor junior engineers, lead cross-functional delivery, and bring rigor to the areas that matter most: retrieval quality, LLM evaluation, frontend engineering depth, and system observability. You will help mature the team's standards in these areas and set the example for how we build production-grade AI applications.
Key Responsibilities- Lead full-stack development of search, RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), and agentic AI applications using Python, TypeScript/React, and Java
- Own retrieval pipeline quality: design and maintain evaluation harnesses for chunking strategies, embedding models, reranking, and end-to-end RAG response quality; drive improvements through offline and online evals
- Build and maintain LLM evaluation frameworks - including automated regression suites, human preference datasets, and task-specific benchmarks - to ensure consistent, trustworthy AI output
- Architect and deliver production-grade React frontends with deep component design, accessible UI patterns, state management (Redux, Zustand, or equivalent), and performance profiling
- Establish observability standards for AI systems: distributed tracing, structured logging, LLM-specific metrics (latency, token cost, hallucination rate, retrieval relevance), dashboards, and alerting
- Design and operate AWS-based infrastructure (ECS/EKS, Lambda, OpenSearch, S3, CloudWatch) using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/CDK); champion DevOps practices including CI/CD, automated testing gates, and release management
- Collaborate with other engineers to integrate embedding models, vector databases, and reranking systems into production-ready pipelines
- Mentor junior engineers in engineering craft, testing discipline, and AI product quality
- Partner with product, design, and mission stakeholders to translate complex requirements into durable technical solutions
- Contribute to engineering standards, ADRs, and team knowledge bases
Required Qualifications- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field
- 5+ years of software engineering experience, with demonstrated ownership of production systems
- Fluent with LLMs as a development tool - spec-driven development, and building AI-first features
- Hands-on experience building and maintaining LLM/RAG pipelines (from embedding and retrieval through reranking and prompt design) and evaluation frameworks (offline evals, regression testing, relevance scoring, hallucination detection)
- Strong frontend engineering skills: React (hooks, context, custom component libraries), TypeScript, state management, accessibility, and performance optimization
- Solid backend development in Python and/or Java; REST and GraphQL API design
- Experience with observability tooling: structured logging, distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry, X-Ray, or equivalent), metrics dashboards (CloudWatch, Datadog, Grafana), and alerting
- AWS cloud experience: ECS/EKS, Lambda, S3, OpenSearch, CloudWatch, IAM
- Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CDK, or CloudFormation)
- Strong CI/CD practices: automated test gates, deployment pipelines, rollback strategies
- Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills; ability to represent engineering decisions to non-technical stakeholders
Preferred Qualifications- Experience with enterprise search platforms (Sinequa, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch)
- Knowledge graph or graph database experience (Neo4j, Amazon Neptune)
- AWS certification (Solutions Architect, Developer, or Machine Learning Specialty)
- Experience with agentic AI frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex, AutoGen, CrewAI)
- Background in AI system reliability engineering
- Familiarity with data visualization (D3.js, Plotly, Recharts) or 3D rendering (Three.js)
- Experience in aerospace, defense, or manufacturing industries
Compensation Range for:
WA applicants is $164,652.00 - $230,512.80
Other site ranges may differCulture StatementDon't meet all desired requirements? Studies have shown that some people are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single desired qualification. At Blue Origin, we are dedicated to building an authentic workplace, so if you're excited about this role but your past experience doesn't align perfectly with every desired qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.
Benefits- Benefits include: Medical, dental, vision, basic and supplemental life insurance, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability, 401(k) with a company match of up to 5%, and an Education Support Program.
- Stock Options for all regular employees (working at least 20 hours/week)
- Paid Time Off: Up to four (4) weeks per year based on weekly scheduled hours, and up to 14 company-paid holidays.
- Dependent on role type and job level, employees may be eligible for benefits and bonuses based on the company's intent to reward individual contributions and enable them to share in the company's results, or other factors at the company's sole discretion. Bonus amounts and eligibility are not guaranteed and subject to change and cancellation. Please check with your recruiter for more details.
