Manager - Project Management III

BLUE ORIGIN•Seattle, WA

2d•$112,059 - $156,883•Onsite

About The Position

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 Blue Origin Operations, which is comprised of Integrated Supply Chain, Test Operations, Safety, Quality, and Mission Assurance. This includes Manufacturing and Supply Chain support across all Blue Origin facilities. This role owns program execution for a family of advanced custom precision machines built entirely in-house at Blue Origin. These are not purchased tools with a service contract behind them — we architect them, build them, instrument them, and sustain them ourselves. Each machine is a large-envelope, multi-axis precision platform integrating motion, thermal, fluid, electrical, and control subsystems, assembled from thousands of parts including long-lead custom fabrications. You will run three programs that overlap continuously: building new machines, keeping a fielded fleet at rate, and executing retrofits on hardware already in production. Each has its own schedule, its own critical path, and its own set of people who have to be in the right place in the right week. Holding all three together — and knowing which one is actually about to slip — is the job. The hardware these machines produce goes directly into flight, so a machine that is late or down has consequences that land well outside this team. You will be the person who sees a slip coming far enough ahead to do something about it, and who tells leadership the truth about it early. That means building schedules engineers actually believe, tracking the handful of items that genuinely drive the end date, and running the cross-functional execution that keeps design, build, supply chain, manufacturing, and quality pointed at the same date. You will join a small, senior, hands-on team that owns its hardware end to end. The machines are in production today and the next-generation configuration is in active design, which means you will work both problems at once. This is a floor-facing program role, not a reporting function — the schedule is only useful if it is built from what is actually happening at the machine. Passion for our mission and vision is required.

Requirements

Bachelor degree in Engineering, Operations, Business, Supply Chain, or a related technical or program discipline, or equivalent experience
5+ years of program or project management experience delivering complex hardware — capital equipment, industrial machinery, automation systems, or aerospace hardware
Demonstrated ownership of an integrated schedule for a multi-discipline hardware program, including building it from scratch and maintaining it through execution
Demonstrated ability to identify and manage critical path, and to drive schedule recovery when a program is behind
Experience leading cross-functional teams through influence rather than direct authority
Demonstrated risk management experience — identification, mitigation planning, and escalation
Proficiency with scheduling tools (Microsoft Project, Primavera, or equivalent).
Demonstrated ability to communicate clearly and candidly with both engineers and senior leadership, including delivering unwelcome news early
Sufficient technical fluency to hold a substantive conversation with mechanical, controls, and manufacturing engineers and to assess whether a plan is credible
Ability to earn trust, maintain positive and professional relationships, and contribute to a culture of inclusion
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

Nice To Haves

Experience managing programs that build production machines or capital equipment, rather than only flight or product hardware
Experience managing a first-of-its-kind development program through to repeatable production
Experience planning and executing retrofit or upgrade campaigns on an operating equipment fleet, including downtime coordination against production demand
Experience managing machine build, commissioning, and qualification lifecycles and the handoffs between them
Experience with long-lead procurement planning and its integration into a program schedule
Working familiarity with ERP/MRP and PLM systems as program data sources
PMP, PMI-SP, or equivalent certification
Lean, Agile, 5S, or continuous improvement training and demonstrated application
Experience in aerospace, semiconductor, medical device, or another regulated or high-precision manufacturing environment
Experience managing resource-constrained programs where the same small team supports production and development simultaneously

Responsibilities

Own the integrated program schedule for machine builds, fleet sustainment, and retrofit campaigns — build it, resource-load it, baseline it, and keep it current against what is actually happening on the floor
Identify, track, and actively manage the critical path; distinguish the handful of items genuinely driving the end date from the much larger set of items that are merely late
Drive cross-functional execution across design engineering, controls, manufacturing, supply chain, quality, and facilities — holding owners to commitments without owning their functions
Run the program's recurring operating rhythm: status reviews, milestone reviews, and cross-functional coordination meetings that produce decisions rather than status recitation
Own the program risk register — identify risks early, drive mitigation plans to named owners and dates, and escalate with a recommendation rather than a problem statement
Manage long-lead item planning and schedule integration with supply chain and production control, so that procurement timing is a schedule input rather than a surprise
Plan and sequence retrofit and upgrade campaigns across a fielded fleet, coordinating machine downtime windows against ongoing production demand to minimize disruption
Track machine build and commissioning progress against milestone gates, and manage the handoffs between build completion, commissioning, qualification, and production release
Develop and report program metrics — schedule performance, milestone attainment, open-issue burndown, and downtime — and use them to drive action rather than to describe history
Prepare and deliver clear, honest status reporting to engineering and program leadership, including bad news early and with a recovery plan attached
Manage scope and change: assess schedule and resource impact when a design change, requirement change, or priority shift lands on work already in progress, and drive the resulting replan
Coordinate requirements definition and verification planning with engineering, and track closure of requirements and open action items through to completion
Interface with internal customers whose hardware depends on machine availability, managing expectations and commitments against real capacity
Maintain program documentation and records — schedules, action items, decisions, risks, and configuration status — so that program state is a matter of record rather than recollection
Drive resolution of blocking issues across organizational boundaries, including the ones with no obvious owner
Identify and implement improvements to program planning, reporting, and execution processes that measurably reduce late surprises