Mission Planning Autonomy Engineer III

BLUE ORIGIN • Reston, VA

1d • $164,652 - $230,513

About The Position

As part of Blue Ring’s Ground & Spaceflight Operations organization, the Mission Planning Autonomy Engineer works with space vehicle, flight dynamics, and mission operations teams to develop, test, and deploy autonomy for the cloud-native Mission Planning System (MPS). MPS plans, schedules, validates, and dispatches activities across a fleet of Blue Ring spacecraft, turning operator, customer, and flight dynamics requests into conflict-free, constraint-checked timelines, ground station contact plans, and onboard command sequences.

The role advances ground operations from human-in-the-loop toward human-on-the-loop by building deterministic planning and scheduling engines, resource models, and simulation environments. These capabilities enable MPS to generate, repair, and safely execute plans with progressively less operator intervention, supported by evidence that each step is safe. The position may focus on autonomy software engineering or simulation and modeling. It supports design, development, delivery, verification, and operation of launch and spacecraft systems for national security missions. 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 and ability to implement in the language 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 (FastAPI, Pydantic, SQLAlchemy, pytest) and event-driven architectures (Kafka, Protobuf, REST, PostgreSQL).
• Experience with scheduling and optimization methods such as OR-Tools/CP-SAT, MILP, or heuristic search, and timeline, resource, or temporal-constraint modeling.
• Experience with simulation and verification, including discrete-event simulation, Monte Carlo analysis, digital twins, deterministic replay, 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 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 that determine when MPS may act automatically and when an operator must approve or may veto.
• 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 comparison of automated plans against operator decisions.
• Extend the spacecraft and ground station simulator to the fidelity needed to verify autonomy, and integrate it 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.
• Work 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 evaluate concepts, scheduling and optimization approaches, and technical risks.
• Produce software architecture and design documentation, autonomy level assessments, verification plans, user manuals, and training materials.
• 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 maintenance, defect correction, and improvements during operator training; ground data system verification, validation, and certification; spacecraft integration; and flight.

Benefits

• Medical insurance
• Dental insurance
• 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
• Potential eligibility for bonuses, depending on role type and job level; amounts and eligibility are not guaranteed

What This Job Offers

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