Mission Planning Autonomy Engineer III

Blue Origin•Reston, VA

4d•$164,652 - $230,513

About The Position

This role is part of Blue National Security’s Blue Ring Ground & Spaceflight Operations organization. The engineer works with space vehicle, flight dynamics, and mission operations teams to develop, test, and deploy autonomy for the Mission Planning System (MPS), a cloud-native ground software system that plans, schedules, validates, and dispatches activities across a fleet of Blue Ring spacecraft. MPS converts operator, customer, and flight dynamics requests into conflict-free, constraint-checked timelines, ground station contact plans, and onboard command sequences. The role helps move ground operations from human-in-the-loop toward human-on-the-loop by building deterministic planning and scheduling engines, resource models, and simulation environments, and by producing evidence that automation is safe. The position may focus on autonomy software engineering or simulation and modeling; both focus areas address the same mission-planning problem. The engineer designs, implements, tests, verifies, and deploys planning and scheduling capabilities; develops constraint engines, resource models, safety gates, and runtime assurance checks; and builds simulation and verification capabilities. The work includes integrating spacecraft and ground station simulators with test environments, implementing standards-based interfaces with government and partner systems, collaborating across technical teams, prototyping approaches, documenting software and verification, and supporting mission-control software through training, integration, verification, and flight activities. Passion for Blue Origin’s mission is required. Relocation is provided, and interviews include a technical assessment.

Requirements

B.S. or higher degree in computer science, computer engineering, aerospace engineering, operations research, mathematics, physics, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
At least 5 years of software development experience.
Experience across the full software development lifecycle, including system design and analysis, requirements capture and development, implementation and verification, system integration, qualification, and release.
Experience developing scheduling, planning, or optimization software, or simulation and modeling software for physical or operational systems.
Experience with software build automation, continuous integration, configuration management, verification, and deployment.
Demonstrated software development skills in multiple programming languages, with the ability to implement in the language most appropriate to the problem domain.
Familiarity with Linux and comfort with basic Unix system administration activities.
Ability to earn trust and maintain positive, professional relationships.
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 developing ground software for spaceflight operations or autonomy for safety-critical systems such as spacecraft, aircraft, robotics, or automated vehicles.
Proficiency in Python, including FastAPI, Pydantic, SQLAlchemy, and pytest, and event-driven architectures such as Kafka, Protobuf, REST, and PostgreSQL.
Experience with scheduling and optimization methods such as OR-Tools/CP-SAT, MILP, and heuristic search, and with timeline, resource, or temporal-constraint modeling.
Experience with simulation and verification, including discrete-event simulation, Monte Carlo analysis, digital twins, deterministic replay, and runtime assurance or levels-of-autonomy frameworks.
Experience with enterprise message brokers such as ActiveMQ Artemis, AMQP, or MQTT, and containerized cloud deployment using Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, or AWS; GovCloud experience is a plus.
Familiarity with CCSDS communications protocols and standards.
Familiarity with spacecraft activity planning, scheduling, and command sequencing.
Familiarity with ground station contact planning and scheduling.
Familiarity with spacecraft subsystem modeling, including power, thermal, or propulsion.
Familiarity with astrodynamics, orbit propagation, and ephemeris products such as JPL MONTE, SPICE, or CCSDS formats.
Familiarity with fault management and anomaly response.
Familiarity with machine learning or LLM-based agents as advisory inputs to deterministic decision systems.
Active TS/SCI clearance, or ability to obtain one.

Responsibilities

Design, implement, test, verify, and deploy MPS planning and scheduling capabilities, including automated activity scheduling, deconfliction, replanning, and course-of-action generation across multiple spacecraft.
Build and evolve the MPS constraint engine and resource models for power, energy storage, onboard data volume, link budget, attitude keep-out, and propellant/delta-V to validate plans before promotion and execution.
Develop safety gates, runtime assurance checks, and fail-closed behaviors governing when MPS may act automatically and when operator approval or veto is required.
Develop simulation and modeling capabilities for autonomy verification, including spacecraft resource and behavior models, scenario generation, deterministic replay of recorded operations, Monte Carlo and stress campaigns, and shadow-mode comparisons of automated plans against operator decisions.
Extend spacecraft and ground station simulators to support autonomy verification and integrate them with the integration test framework and Software-in-the-Loop and Hardware-in-the-Loop environments.
Implement standards-based interfaces for mission plans, tasking, and status to interoperate with U.S. Government and partner systems, including CCSDS mission operations and navigation data standards, over enterprise message brokers.
Collaborate with the Astrodynamics and Trajectory eXecution team, flight dynamics, command and control, ground communications, and flight operations to define software requirements, interfaces, architectures, and designs.
Develop rapid prototypes to prove concepts, evaluate scheduling and optimization approaches, and quantify technical risks.
Produce software architecture and design documentation, autonomy level assessments, verification plans, user manuals, and training material.
Follow software development processes that meet Blue Origin and customer-required standards for software safety and reliability.
Support frequent update cycles for pre-flight testing, mission rehearsals, and operations training events.
Support mission-control software operations, including maintenance, defect correction, and improvements during operator training; ground data system verification, validation, and certification; spacecraft integration; and flight.

Benefits

Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
Basic and supplemental life insurance.
Paid parental leave.
Short- and long-term disability.
401(k) with company match of up to 5%.
Education Support Program.
Stock options for regular employees working at least 20 hours per week.
Up to four weeks of paid time off per year based on weekly scheduled hours.
Up to 14 company-paid holidays.
Depending on role type and job level, employees may be eligible for benefits and bonuses based on the company’s intent to reward individual contributions and enable them to share in company results; bonus amounts and eligibility are not guaranteed and may change or be cancelled.