Application close date:
Applications will be accepted on an ongoing basis until the requisition is closed.
This role is part of Blue National Security (BNS), where our focus is the design, development, and delivery of launch and spacecraft systems for national security missions. Through Blue Ring, our all-in-one, high-powered hybrid solar-electric and chemical-propelled spacecraft, we provide unmatched mission maneuverability, versatility, and capacity at dramatically lower-profile costs.
Build the Hardware That Survives SpaceSpace is unforgiving: extreme temperatures, violent vibration and shock, radiation, and vacuum. The electronics and photonics flying on Blue Origin spacecraft have to survive all of it. We need an experienced packaging engineer to own ruggedized enclosures, electro-optical assemblies, and fiber-optic integration from concept through flight release.
This role supports classified programs. Candidates must be eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance. An existing clearance is preferred but not required; we're glad to sponsor the right candidate.
The MissionBlue Origin is building the infrastructure for humanity's future in space. Optical communications is becoming a core capability for high-rate space networking, and the hardware that makes it work has to hold tight thermal stability and precise optical interfaces while surviving launch and years on orbit. That's fundamentally a mechanical and thermal problem, and it's the one this team solves.
You'll own the mechanical design of the electro-optical units at the center of that system: modem processing and photonics units, electro-optic assemblies, transceiver hardware, and optical amplifier assemblies, plus the chassis and stacked-unit architectures that house them. The thermal paths that keep lasers, modulators, and receivers stable enough to close a link are yours, along with the fiber optic tray and every fiber run, splice, and junction inside the box, and the interfaces that let your units mount to the optical payload and host spacecraft. You'll work closely with electrical engineers and PCB designers throughout, because on hardware this dense, mechanical, thermal, and electrical design converge or fail together.
As the senior technical voice for electro-optical packaging on a team with deep spacecraft avionics, structures, and thermal heritage, you'll set the design standards, analysis methods, and process baselines the team builds on.
What You'll Do•
Own complex packaging assemblies including enclosures, chassis, card-cage and stacked-unit architectures, mounting systems, and fiber junction housings, across the full lifecycle from requirements through production support.
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Lead the mechanical and thermal design of modem processing and photonics units, integrating high-speed digital boards, photonics boards, electro-optic daughter cards, and power conversion slices into flight-qualifiable, mass- and volume-efficient packages. Package optical amplifier and transceiver-class hardware, addressing high optical power handling, fiber end-face reliability, hermeticity, and moisture control.
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Own the mechanical thermal design with thermal engineering: heat rejection paths, mounting materials, heater placement, thermal isolation, and thermal control of tunable lasers, modulators, and TEC-cooled devices, where drift drives calibration burden and link margin.
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Own fiber optic tray design and all internal fiber management: layout, routing, bend-radius control, strain relief, splice retention, and connector selection. Define the splicing and workmanship processes and specify the equipment to execute them. Define mechanical and installation requirements for electrical harnesses and carry them through detailed design with harness designers.
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Collaborate with electrical engineers and PCB designers from architecture through layout, fabrication, and test. In ECAD/MCAD co-design, converge board outline, component floor planning, heat-source placement, and connector location, and weigh in on component and BOM decisions where mechanical and thermal factors matter, including junction-temperature margin and derating trades. Define board-level protection and workmanship: staking, conformal coating, bonding, and component restraint for vibration and shock.
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Drive thermal, structural, vibration, shock, and fatigue analyses. Own tolerance stack-ups and thermo-elastic stability budgets that protect optical interfaces and coupling efficiency across environments. Lead trade studies balancing mass, thermal and structural performance, EMI/EMC, manufacturability, cost, schedule, and risk.
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Own the mechanical, thermal, environmental, EMC, mass, and envelope requirement set. Decompose host requirements into verifiable requirements, maintain traceability, and report mass properties against host allocations. Negotiate host vehicle accommodation, including mounting interfaces, mass and CG envelopes, thermal limits, and dynamic environment levels. When hardware qualified to one standard meets a different host spec, quantify the gap and drive it closed.
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Deliver models, drawings, specifications, and release packages, including mechanical and thermal ICDs. Apply GD&T per ASME Y14.5. Address space-optics risks such as contamination control, outgassing, hermeticity, and radiation-induced fiber attenuation, and support radiation and reliability teams on part selection and long-lead procurement.
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Design for production. Apply DFM/DFA, specify fiber and optical assembly processes, and partner with fabrication and assembly suppliers on producibility. Own test and integration support, including fixtures and optical loopback setups, and shape environmental test campaigns from planning through anomaly closeout.
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Mentor engineers, lead design reviews, and build team capability in electro-optical packaging. Perform all work in accordance with applicable security requirements, protecting classified information and controlled technical data.
What You Bring• B.S. in Mechanical, Aerospace, Optical, or Photonics Engineering, or a related discipline, plus 5-10+ years designing electromechanical or electro-optical assemblies, electronics or photonics packaging, or comparable high-reliability hardware, with a track record of owning designs from requirements through production.
• Hands-on experience packaging electro-optical hardware (coherent or high-speed optical modems, transceivers, optical amplifier assemblies, photonic devices, lasers or detectors, or fiber-optic assemblies), including the thermal, optical-interface, and contamination challenges that come with it.
• Demonstrated experience designing fiber management inside a constrained enclosure: tray layout, routing, bend-radius and strain-relief strategy, splice retention, and connector selection, plus thermal management of temperature-sensitive photonics, including TEC integration and thermal isolation.
• Experience integrating PCBAs, connectors, and cable or fiber interfaces into mechanical assemblies, with a history of close collaboration with electrical engineers and PCB designers on dense, high-reliability boards, participating in layout reviews and influencing component selection before layout locks. Experience specifying mechanical and installation requirements for electrical harnesses.
• Knowledge of ruggedized electronics and photonics design: thermal management, structural protection, vibration and shock survival, vacuum compatibility, and EMI/EMC shielding, plus experience conducting or directing the supporting analyses.
• Ability to define and hold mechanical and thermal interfaces in both directions: specifying what your hardware requires from the host vehicle, and negotiating with the engineers who own adjacent optical, structural, and payload hardware.
• Strong 3D CAD skills (Creo/Pro-E a plus) and solid command of GD&T, tolerance stack-ups, and ASME Y14.5 drawing practice.
• Eligibility to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance.
• Comfort in a fast-moving program with evolving requirements and open trades: the judgment to make defensible decisions before every input is final, and the communication skills to make technical risk clear.
Bonus Points For• An active U.S. government security clearance, and/or an M.S. in a relevant discipline.
• Experience with optical communications hardware (coherent or IM-DD transceivers, silicon photonics, optical modems, optical amplifiers, or pluggable form factors), and experience building modems, transceivers, or optical terminal electronics to standards such as SIS-002, OpenZR+, SDA optical communications terminal standards, or CCSDS optical standards, including how changes there propagate into mechanical and thermal design.
• Working knowledge of laser communications terminal architecture and coherent link building blocks, such as integrated coherent receivers, modulators, tunable sources, and amplifiers, and what each demands mechanically and thermally.
• Experience developing hosted payloads or line-replaceable units against a spacecraft bus interface specification, and familiarity with spacecraft environmental specifications and qualification tailoring, such as NASA GEVS and SMC-S-016, including payload isolation as a way to reconcile hardware capability with host environments.
• Experience maturing prototypes into producible, qualifiable flight products, including reconstructing design documentation for hardware you didn't originally design.
• Fiber-optic depth: splicing, connector and termini selection (MIL-PRF-29504, ARINC 801), cleaning and inspection practice (IPC-8497-1), link loss budgeting, and familiarity with IPC-A-620 and J-STD-001, plus experience with photonic and semiconductor assembly processes such as die attach, wire bond, flip chip, hermetic sealing, and fiber alignment.
• Analysis depth in electronics thermal, structural, vibration, shock, or fatigue work, including solder-fatigue methods such as Steinberg or Engelmaier and FEA/thermal simulation in ANSYS or FloTHERM, plus hands-on familiarity with ECAD tools such as Altium or Mentor xPedition and PLM tools such as Windchill.
• Familiarity with qualification and reliability standards such as Telcordia GR-468-CORE and GR-1221, MIL-STD-883, MIL-STD-1678, or JEDEC, plus experience with radiation-tolerant part selection and contamination control for space optics, including outgassing screening per ASTM E595.
• Background in spacecraft, national-security space, human spaceflight, launch vehicle, or other extreme-environment hardware, ideally on long-duration or high-radiation missions beyond LEO, plus a track record of mentoring engineers and building new design or analysis capability on a team.
Base Pay Range for:
CO applicants is $144,179.00 - $201,849.90
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.
