Engineer - Aerospace Systems Principal

Application close date:

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! 

Honeybee Robotics | Exploration Systems (BNS-EX) Location: Pasadena, CA

Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company, is a pioneering force in the development of robotic systems for space exploration. Operating within Blue Origin's Exploration Systems (BNS-EX) business team, Honeybee engineers design, build, and test novel spacecraft and robotic systems that push the boundaries of planetary exploration — from lunar and Martian surface missions to deep-space science instruments. Our teams are small, fast-moving, and technically elite, delivering flight-ready hardware on lean schedules for some of the most ambitious missions in the industry. We build things that go to space and work.

Honeybee Robotics is seeking a Principal Systems Engineer to serve as a senior technical authority and project technical lead on exploratory spacecraft programs. In this role, you will own projects through the full systems engineering lifecycle — from mission concept and requirements decomposition through integration, verification, and delivery — for complex, first-of-their-kind robotic spacecraft. You will provide expert technical leadership across multi-disciplinary teams, set the systems engineering direction for your programs, and serve as a primary technical interface to customers and mission stakeholders. Beyond program execution, you will own initiatives to create and improve project-level and strategic business processes, driving the evolution of how Honeybee's systems engineering organization operates, scales, and delivers.

This is an on-site role. You will lead by doing — authoring verification plans, driving trade studies, managing interfaces, and working on the integration floor alongside your team. You will also be a mentor and force multiplier, elevating the technical capability of the broader Honeybee systems engineering organization. The ideal candidate brings melds deep expertise and a solutions-focused mindset to lead teams through complex issues with intention and focus.

• Lead a small, dynamic, multi-disciplinary project team as the technical project lead, responsible for delivering the technical product to the customer on a tight deadline with limited resources — driving focus, removing blockers, and maintaining team cadence from kickoff through delivery.
• Partner with program managers to actively manage the trade-space between technical requirements, schedule, and budget; provide credible, data-driven inputs to program planning.

• Lead anomaly investigations, root cause analyses, and recovery planning for complex system-level failures during integration, test, and operations.

• Translate mission objectives into a verifiable and pragmatic system architecture, setting technical direction for novel applications with limited precedent and programmatic resources.
• Own system-level requirements, technical margins, and associated command media throughout the full project lifecycle — formulating, decomposing, allocating, and managing changes with rigor and traceability.

• Act as the primary technical interface to the customer — translating evolving mission needs into verifiable requirements while proactively assessing and negotiating the impact of changes with stakeholders.

• Plan and develop comprehensive verification methods, events, and campaigns — from breadboard and hardware-in-the-loop testing through environmental qualification and acceptance
• Champion the Honeybee’s Quality Management System (QMS) and enforce rigorous, efficient peer reviews of all critical designs, analyses, and test plans across the business.

• Provide mentoring and technical leadership to engineers across Honeybee, fostering growth through direct feedback, design reviews, and stretch assignments.
• Own technical direction for systems engineering processes, tools, and standards at the program and organizational level; develop and champion best practices across Honeybee's SE discipline.

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Engineering or a related technical field.
• 20+ years of experience in the design, development, and launch of aerospace systems, with a preference for robotic spacecraft experience.
• Proven track record of leading all aspects of an aerospace project from requirements definition through verification and delivery.
• Advanced professional expertise across the full SE development cycle: concept development, requirements, design, analysis, validation, integration, safety, configuration management, verification, and test.
• Strong problem-solving abilities and proficiency in trade study methods, including the ability to set frameworks for trading low-, medium-, and high-performance technical architectures
• Leadership or management background with a demonstrated history of mentoring and developing team members.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; ability to present complex technical data and negotiate with stakeholders on behalf of the organization.
• Demonstrated knowledge of NASA spaceflight standards and best practices.
• Familiarity with collaboration and systems engineering tools such as Confluence, JIRA, and JAMA.
• Experience serving as a primary technical interface to government or commercial spaceflight customers.
• 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.

• Demonstrated ability to provide pragmatic solutions to novel and complex technical problems requiring ingenuity and flexibility.
• Experience with planetary surface missions, robotic spacecraft, or exploratory science instruments.
• Experience with the development and execution of spaceflight mission operations and associated systems.
• Experience leading or contributing to SE process improvement, tool development, or organizational capability-building initiatives.
• Familiarity with five or more related functional areas (e.g., structures, avionics, software, GNC, thermal, mechanisms).

At Honeybee, you won't spend your career on a single bolt of a single vehicle. You will own systems. You will see your work launch. You will work alongside some of the most talented and mission-driven engineers in the industry, building hardware that explores worlds beyond our own. If you are a systems engineer who leads with technical credibility, thrives in a fast-paced and resource-constrained environment, and wants to leave a mark on the history of space exploration — this is your role.

Base Pay Range for:

Don’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.