NPI Systems Engineer - Solar Center of Excellence

Application close date:

Applications will be accepted on an ongoing basis until the requisition is closed.

At Blue Origin, we envision millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth. We’re working to develop reusable, safe, and low-cost space vehicles and systems within a culture of safety, collaboration, and inclusion. Join our team of problem solvers as we add new chapters to the history of spaceflight!

This role is part of Advanced Concepts and Enterprise Engineering (ACE), supporting Blue Origin’s mission of millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth. The team fosters innovation and drives engineering workflows of the future, shared solutions and standards, simplicity and lower costs, and manufacturable design.

As part of a hardworking team of specialists, technicians, and engineers, you will own end-to-end integration verification for the New Product Introduction (NPI) lines that bring next-generation spacecraft solar arrays into production at unprecedented rates and reliability . This is an architecture-level opportunity for green-field design and process integration - the equipment is still being specified, the flow has not been locked, and the architecture is still a set of open decisions.

You will work on a team of manufacturing, process, and ground support equipment engineers owning their individual process areas - cell interconnection, lamination and bonding, mechanism assembly, tooling, fixturing, automation. You own the interfaces between them and the overall performance of the manufacturing system as a whole . Your object is the value stream as a system, raw material intake through wing integration, verified end to end as scalable and stable for high volume production. You will use data to make enhancements to the solar array design with design engineers vertically integrated within the organization.

You will not only ensure that each process works , but more importantly you will be responsible for making the i ntegrated system scalable. That is a claim about distributions and resource envelopes: process capability, equipment availability, yield, test throughput, and lot-to-lot variation. You will build the models that determine whether it closes, instrument the line to find out what it actually does , and generate the verification evidence the program's scalability claim rests on. You will partner with Operations to define the architecture the full-rate line s are built to, ensuring the lines inherit proven designs instead of new discovery, enabling a rapid ramp up to rate production.

This is a hands-on building role. You will write the models yourself and be on the floor with the machines and instrumentation. You'll play a front seat role in architecting high volume production lines powering the next generation of space vehicles.

We are primarily seeking a senior-level engineer to help establish and scale this capability, but are open to exceptional candidates at adjacent career levels whose manufacturing, industrialization, NPI, and cross-functional execution experience align with the needs of the role.

Special Mentions [ Edit or remove as needed ]

• •Relocation provided
• •Travel expected up to 25% of the time
• •Interviews will include a technical assessment

Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

Own end-to-end integration verification of the NPI value stream, and the interfaces between process areas - material handoff, fixture and datum compatibility, data continuity, environmental constraints, storage and transport

Build and maintain the capacity, availability, and throughput models that determine whether the value stream closes at rate; identify the constraint and the capital decisions rate capability depends on

Characterize how the integrated system actually behaves , hands-on with developing and implementing instrumentation, including how variation in one process area propagates to yield and throughput downstream

Establish the rate conditions design, processes, and equipment must be verified against - takt, capability and availability targets, test throughput, sampling posture, capacity margin - and the verification methods that close them

Author the production architecture requirements that make those targets achievable: how far each process can be modularized, how much capacity margin is needed, and how sameness between parallel modules is specified , verified , and controlled

Derive the rate and interface requirements that equipment and tooling specifications must satisfy, and co-author critical capital specifications with the responsible process and GSE engineers

Build producibility feedback tooling that quantifies the production consequence of a design choice early enough to influence the design

Carry proven changes from NPI toward production with process capability evidence, and support the technical risk work behind them - PFMEA linkage, escape exposure, detection latency, requalification impact

Partner with design engineering on producibility trades, Operations on production architecture and module commissioning, and mission assurance on acceptance test strategy at rate

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in Industrial , Manufacturing, Mechanical, Electrical, or Systems Engineering, or equivalent technical discipline

8 + years of experience in manufacturing, industrial, process, or production engineering (or 5+ years with an advanced degree)

Experience industrializing a product from development into higher-rate production, including hands-on work with automated production equipment

Demonstrated ownership of a multi-stage value stream as a system - flow, takt balance, aggregate capability, and the interfaces between stages - not only individual processes or stations

Hands-on experience building and defending quantitative models of a production system: capacity, availability, throughput, and process capability

Technical credibility with specialist process and equipment engineers - the depth to challenge capability claims, automation feasibility, and supplier specifications on their own terms

Ability to verify and influence work owned by other teams without direct line authority, and to communicate findings that change design and capital decisions

Must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum.

Prior aerospace or systems engineering experience is not required . This role needs industrialization depth in a high-rate, high-reliability production environment. Candidates from semiconductor, battery manufacturing, medical device, automotive, or comparable industries are encouraged to apply. If you meet most of the above and the work described sounds like yours, we want to hear from you.

Preferred Qualifications

Industrializing a product where both high rate and high reliability were binding - semiconductor, battery manufacturing, medical device, automotive safety-critical, aerospace at rate, or comparable

Working inside a pilot, NPI, or process-development line built with production-specification equipment, and carrying proven changes from it into a qualified production baseline

Greenfield production or facility planning where little prior definition existed

Test-capacity-limited production, where acceptance test throughput constrains line architecture - environmental chambers, vibration, EMI/EMC, flash/IV, electroluminescence

SPC and process capability, measurement system analysis, PFMEA and control plans, and gated qualification models (PPAP/APQP, IQ/OQ/PQ, or equivalent)

Specifying or developing high-rate production automation, including modularity, reconfigurability, and data architecture requirements

Spacecraft solar arrays, photovoltaics, deployment mechanisms, precision mechanisms, or comparable high-reliability hardware

Carrying an industrialization m