NPI Systems Engineer - Solar Center of Excellence

Blue Origin•Hutto, TX

13d

About The Position

Blue Origin’s Advanced Concepts and Enterprise Engineering (ACE) team is hiring an NPI Systems Engineer to support the development and industrialization of spacecraft solar arrays. The role owns end-to-end integration verification for New Product Introduction (NPI) lines, from raw material intake through wing integration, and ensures the integrated manufacturing value stream is scalable and stable for high-volume production. It is an architecture-level role involving greenfield design and process integration, where equipment, process flow, and production architecture are still being defined. The engineer will own interfaces across process areas such as cell interconnection, lamination and bonding, mechanism assembly, tooling, fixturing, and automation. The work combines quantitative modeling with hands-on line instrumentation and factory-floor engagement. The engineer will assess process capability, equipment availability, yield, test throughput, lot-to-lot variation, and capacity margin; develop verification evidence for production scalability; and use data to inform solar array design enhancements. This role partners with Operations to establish production-line architecture and with design engineering to assess producibility, helping ensure full-rate lines inherit proven designs and can ramp rapidly. Blue Origin is primarily seeking a senior-level engineer, but will consider exceptional candidates at adjacent career levels with relevant manufacturing, industrialization, NPI, and cross-functional execution experience. Relocation is provided, travel is expected up to 25% of the time, and interviews include a technical assessment. Applicants must meet the stated U.S. citizenship or immigration-status requirements.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Industrial, Manufacturing, Mechanical, Electrical, or Systems Engineering, or an equivalent technical discipline.
At least 8 years of experience in manufacturing, industrial, process, or production engineering, or at least 5 years with an advanced degree.
Experience industrializing a product from development into higher-rate production, including hands-on work with automated production equipment.
Demonstrated ownership of a multi-stage value stream as a system, including flow, takt balance, aggregate capability, and interfaces between stages.
Hands-on experience building and defending quantitative production-system models covering capacity, availability, throughput, and process capability.
Technical credibility with specialist process and equipment engineers, including the ability to challenge capability claims, automation feasibility, and supplier specifications.
Ability to verify and influence work owned by other teams without direct line authority, and communicate findings that change design and capital decisions.
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 industrializing a product for which both high rate and high reliability were binding, such as semiconductor, battery manufacturing, medical device, automotive safety-critical, aerospace at rate, or a comparable industry.
Experience working inside a pilot, NPI, or process-development line built with production-specification equipment and carrying proven changes into a qualified production baseline.
Greenfield production or facility planning where little prior definition existed.
Experience with test-capacity-limited production where acceptance-test throughput constrains line architecture, including environmental chambers, vibration, EMI/EMC, flash/IV, or electroluminescence.
Knowledge of SPC and process capability, measurement system analysis, PFMEA and control plans, and gated qualification models such as PPAP/APQP or IQ/OQ/PQ.
Experience specifying or developing high-rate production automation, including modularity, reconfigurability, and data architecture requirements.
Experience with spacecraft solar arrays, photovoltaics, deployment mechanisms, precision mechanisms, or comparable high-reliability hardware.
Experience carrying an industrialization methodology across multiple products or programs.
Experience developing analytical tools or automated design-for-manufacturing feedback for rapid engineering decisions.
Familiarity with AS9100, ISO 9001, APQP, PPAP, or other production quality systems.
Experience supporting supplier readiness and supplier development.

Responsibilities

Own end-to-end integration verification of the NPI value stream and interfaces between process areas, including material handoff, fixture and datum compatibility, data continuity, environmental constraints, storage, and transport.
Build and maintain capacity, availability, and throughput models to assess whether the value stream can meet production rate; identify constraints and capital decisions affecting rate capability.
Characterize integrated-system behavior by developing and implementing instrumentation, and assess how variation in one process area affects downstream yield and throughput.
Establish rate conditions for design, processes, and equipment, including takt, capability and availability targets, test throughput, sampling posture, and capacity margin, and define verification methods.
Author production architecture requirements for modularization, capacity margin, and the specification, verification, and control of sameness between parallel modules.
Derive rate and interface requirements for equipment and tooling specifications, and co-author critical capital specifications with process and ground support equipment engineers.
Build producibility-feedback tools that quantify production consequences of design choices early enough to influence design.
Carry proven changes from NPI toward production with process-capability evidence, and support technical risk work including PFMEA linkage, escape exposure, detection latency, and requalification impact.
Partner with design engineering on producibility trades, Operations on production architecture and module commissioning, and mission assurance on acceptance-test strategy at rate.
Write production-system models and work on the factory floor with machines and instrumentation.

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.
Paid time off of up to four weeks 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 tied to individual contributions, company results, or other factors; amounts and eligibility are not guaranteed.