Principal Architect, Autonomous Systems (Ground and Space)

Blue Origin • Littleton, CO

3d

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! The role is part of the In-Space Systems business unit, which is focused on addressing two of the most compelling challenges in spaceflight today: space infrastructure and increasing mobility on-orbit. Role Summary: You are the technical owner of Blue National Security's autonomy product architecture, spanning both ground and space. You will define how autonomous capability is decomposed across the ground segment and the vehicle, drive that architecture through implementation across every contributing discipline, and carry it to operational deployment.

Requirements

• B.S. in Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or a related technical field, or equivalent hands on experience.
• 10+ years developing software or systems for mission or safety critical applications, including architectural ownership of a distributed or multi segment system.
• 3+ years developing and deploying ML systems into production, with demonstrated deployment on resource constrained or embedded targets such as edge GPUs, FPGAs, DSPs, or radiation tolerant processors.
• Proficiency in Python and C/C++, and working expertise with modern ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, or ONNX Runtime) and edge optimization toolchains (quantization, pruning, TensorRT, TFLite, or equivalent).
• Demonstrated experience leading architecture across multiple engineering disciplines, including flight software, hardware, and vehicle dynamics or controls.
• Demonstrated ability to build technical consensus across disciplines, earning influence through depth and credibility, and to brief executives, government customers, and engineering peers with equal clarity.
• 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

• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or Aerospace Engineering.
• GN&C, navigation, trajectory, or estimation background for flight vehicles, including experience bringing learning-based methods into classical control and estimation architectures.
• Autonomous spacecraft operations experience: on orbit fault detection and isolation, autonomous mission sequencing, RPO, closed loop vehicle control, or autonomous operations in communications denied environments.
• Ground segment or mission operations experience, including tasking, ground autonomy, or ground to space autonomy handoff.
• Space grade or radiation tolerant compute (NVIDIA Orin, Xilinx Versal, rad hard SoCs); real time and safety critical environments (RTOS, bare metal); hardware in the loop and simulation to hardware workflows; or formal V&V methods for ML.
• DoD, USSF, NRO, or IC program experience, and an active U.S. Secret or TS/SCI clearance.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end autonomy product architecture across ground and space.
• Define the system decomposition, interfaces, and functional allocation between ground based and onboard autonomy, and own the technical roadmap that takes it to flight.
• Make and defend the hard allocation decisions.
• Determine what reasoning executes on orbit versus on the ground, and architect for degraded, latent, and communications denied operations.
• Drive architectural coherence across disciplines.
• Coordinate across ground systems, perception, flight software, electrical hardware, GN&C, simulation, and navigation and trajectory functions, translating operational requirements into a single, consistent, buildable architecture.
• Own the embedded AI/ML realization.
• Guide model architecture, training and data pipelines, compression and quantization, and hardware aware optimization, so that models meet real time and deterministic behavior requirements within actual SWaP-C constraints.
• Build the assurance case for the full autonomy loop.
• Establish V&V practices for ML in high consequence systems, including uncertainty quantification, fault detection and isolation, runtime assurance, robustness testing, and simulation to hardware validation.
• Set the technical direction and raise the team with you.
• Own the autonomy architecture baseline and technical roadmap.
• Mentor and unblock engineers across the AI, FSW and Autonomy team, and represent Blue National Security's autonomy and AI/ML capability to government customers and partners.

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%, and an Education Support Program.
• Stock Options for all regular employees (working at least 20 hours/week)
• Paid Time Off: Up to four (4) weeks per year based on weekly scheduled hours, and up to 14 company-paid holidays.

What This Job Offers

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