Senior Thermal Systems Engineer

About the role

This role is part of the Lunar Permanence business unit, which develops Blue Origin’s Blue Moon landers and related products. The role involves working directly with NASA as part of the Human Landing System (HLS) Sustaining Lunar Development (SLD) program.

Responsibilities

• Define and decompose system-level requirements into actionable specifications within the Thermal subsystem domain.
• Develop and maintain interface control documents (ICDs) to ensure subsystem compatibility and integration fidelity.
• Conduct system analysis and trade studies to optimize thermal subsystem performance, reliability, and cost across mission profiles.
• Drive verification and validation planning, including environmental testing, functional checks, and mission simulations.
• Lead passive hardware design reviews (SRR, PDR, CDR) and ensure technical artifacts meet quality and compliance standards.
• Support integration, test, and launch operations, including anomaly resolution and post-launch analysis.
• Manage schedule management of subsystem systems engineering efforts and products, team coordination, and support make vs buy decisions, hardware procurement, and vendor management.
• Mentor junior engineers and foster a culture of technical excellence and cross-functional collaboration.
• Own passive thermal artifacts such as the master equipment list, power equipment list, safety products, and other documents.
• Ensure alignment and synchronization of thermal subsystem analysis data with interfacing subsystems such as Electrical Power, Liquids, Gas, and GNC.
• Review system level CONOPS information and distill into useable datasets for consumption by the thermal analysis and passive thermal hardware teams.
• Verify compliance of designs against documented hardware temperature limits.

Requirements

• Minimum of a B.S. degree in engineering and 10+ years of related experience.
• Knowledge of systems engineering practices, integration processes, design for manufacturing, and quality control.
• Proven expertise in requirement analysis, interface definition, and component and system-level verification and validation.
• Demonstrated experience with flight integration and environmental qualification (thermal, vibration, etc.).
• Strong understanding of subsystems and their thermal implications across the mission lifecycle.
• Background in passive thermal control hardware or thermal analysis.
• Demonstrated experience with spacecraft thermal control hardware design and development.
• Experience with software tools such as DOORS, Jama, MATLAB, Cameo, Thermal Desktop etc. design and analysis tools.
• Experience performing simple thermal assessments via first principles/hand calculations.

Qualifications

• M.S. degree in engineering and/or 14+ years of related experience.
• Strong communication skills, with an ability to quickly build consensus among stakeholders.
• Experience leading programs from concept through launch and operations.
• Hands-on experience with satellite ground systems and mission operations.
• Experience with data analysis (Matlab, Excel, Winplot, etc.), and scripting (bash, sh, Python, etc.) tools.
• Experience evaluating make/buy decisions.
• Experience managing and mentoring engineering teams, including coaching, technical guidance, and cross-functional coordination.
• Expertise in passive thermal control hardware, with a proven track record of flight hardware delivery.
• Experience in leading sub-assembly and/or system level thermal balance tests and post-test design correlation and validation.

Benefits

• 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%.
• Education Support Program.
• Paid Time Off: Up to four (4) weeks per year based on weekly scheduled hours, and up to 14 company-paid holidays.
• Stock Options for all regular employees (working at least 20 hours/week).

Pay

Base Pay Range For CO applicants is $144,179.00 - $201,849.90
WA applicants is $156,802.00 - $219,522.45
Other Site Ranges May Differ

Schedule

Not specified