Director - Reliability Engineering

BLUE ORIGIN • West Melbourne, FL

22h • Onsite

About The Position

At Blue Origin, the vision is to enable millions of people to live and work in space for the benefit of Earth, developing reusable, safe, and low-cost space vehicles and systems within a culture of safety, collaboration, and inclusion. This Director of Reliability role is part of Blue Origin Operations, specifically within Advanced Manufacturing & GSE Engineering. The Reliability organization supports the full lifecycle from design through operations, maintenance, and supply chain across production, integration, launch/ground, test, and refurbishment operations at Blue Origin facilities. The Director will build and lead a company-wide organization responsible for reliability across the entire lifecycle of operations, including design reliability, operations reliability, maintenance engineering, supply chain reliability, and weld operations. The team will be embedded with various operational groups, owning reliability of execution spanning GSE and tooling design, production and operations processes, supplier oversight, weld standards, maintenance engineering support, and in-house controls troubleshooting. The organization's mission is to identify issues that drive cost, constrain reliability, and limit production and launch rates, then organize and implement cross-functional solutions to achieve program and business goals. The role requires leadership skills, technical expertise, and a commitment to safety and quality to positively impact safe human spaceflight, with a passion for the company's mission and vision.

Requirements

• B.S. degree in engineering or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Demonstrated track record of improving reliability, availability, or throughput of complex processes, tooling, ground systems, or products in production, operational, or design settings.
• Significant experience leading cross-functional root cause investigations and implementing durable corrective and preventive actions.
• Strong ability to partner with Design Engineering, Operations, Quality, Supply Chain, and Program Management and to influence decisions at director/VP level.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to clearly articulate operational and design risks, trade-offs, and recommendations to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Applicants for employment at Blue Origin must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (i.e. current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum.
• Ability to travel regularly between Blue Origin sites (e.g., Kent, launch/test sites, major production locations, supplier locations), with increased travel around major test/launch or investigation milestones.
• Ability to support extended hours, nights, or weekends during critical operations or major investigations, as needed.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in launch/spaceflight, aerospace production, or other mission-critical, capital-intensive operations.
• Deep familiarity with reliability and operational excellence methods (e.g., FMEA/FMECA, FRACAS, RCM, SPC, PFMEA, control plans, design for reliability).
• Experience in design reliability engineering, including design FMEA, reliability analysis, and design for maintainability.
• Supply chain quality or supplier management experience, including vendor audits, supplier quality agreements, and critical spares planning.
• Experience standing up a new function or organization and scaling it across multiple sites or programs.
• Demonstrated success building "embedded" engineering teams that work day-to-day with designers, technicians, and operations.
• Comfort operating in ambiguous, fast-changing environments and making decisions with imperfect information.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the vision, charter, and long-term roadmap for Reliability Engineering across Blue Origin operations and ground systems.
• Build and lead a high-performing Reliability organization embedded in design, production, integration/refurb, launch/ground, and test operations at key sites.
• Establish company-wide standards and governance for reliability across the full lifecycle of operations: design FMEAs, operational reliability of processes/tooling/ground systems, weld standards, maintenance engineering practices, and controls troubleshooting capabilities.
• Prioritize work based on impact to launch/flight rate, safety, vehicle and facility risk, and cost; ensure the team focuses on the highest-value issues.
• Serve as extreme owner for root cause and corrective actions for major process, tooling, GSE/ground, weld, and supplier events that affect mission success or fleet risk.
• Partner with Design Engineering, Operations, Quality, Supply Chain, and Program leadership to integrate reliability considerations into design reviews, rate plans, capacity planning, supplier selection, and concepts of operations for major programs (initially New Glenn).
• Drive design reliability engineering: establish design FMEA standards, design for reliability/maintainability (DFR/DFM) practices, and early engagement in design reviews to identify and mitigate reliability risks before hardware is built.
• Own supply chain reliability and critical spares strategy: establish supplier quality standards, conduct vendor audits, manage vendor performance, develop critical spares strategies, and address long-lead component procurement and obsolescence.
• Lead weld reliability and engineering: establish company-wide weld standards, oversee CWI/SCWI personnel, own weld process control and acceptance criteria, and serve as executive owner for weld nonconformance root causes.
• Provide maintenance engineering support: deliver engineering expertise to maintenance organizations (FL/HSV/Kent), establish maintenance engineering standards (PM optimization, predictive maintenance), lead technical investigations for equipment failures, and drive maintainability improvements through reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) practices.
• Build in-house controls engineering capability: establish controls troubleshooting and maintenance support to reduce Factory Automation dependency, allow Factory Automation to focus on design and build, and develop controls standards and preventive maintenance for high-tempo operations.
• Drive development and use of a focused set of reliability and flow metrics (e.g., scrubs/rollbacks and major delays driven by process/GSE, unplanned downtime, turnaround performance, repeat issues, supplier quality metrics, weld defect rates) to guide decisions and demonstrate value.
• Ensure strong feedback loops from operations back into design, manufacturing engineering, GSE design, and supply chain so that lessons learned from the floor, pad, and field are captured in product, tooling, process, and supplier changes.
• Represent Reliability in site and enterprise forums; identify and propagate best practices across programs and locations.
• Develop talent, culture, and ways of working within Reliability that emphasize hands-on engagement, data-driven decisions, and closure of systemic issues over one-off fixes.

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
• Up to 14 company-paid holidays
• 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

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director