Principal Hardware Engineer – TeraWave Network Switch Platform

BLUE ORIGIN • Los Angeles, WA

1d • $183,193 - $256,470 • Onsite

About The Position

Blue Origin's Emerging Systems business unit is building TeraWave, a satellite communications constellation powered by the most advanced optical communications architecture ever attempted: thousands of optically interconnected satellites delivering symmetrical data speeds of up to 6 Tbps anywhere on Earth, providing enterprise and hyperscale customers with resilient, scalable connectivity for critical operations where terrestrial infrastructure cannot reach. You will own the end-to-end hardware design of the switching subsystem from high-speed Ethernet switch and PHY integration to power architecture, embedded management controllers, and high-speed PCB layout. This is a hands-on role for an engineer who has designed and shipped complex electronic products in fast-moving environments and wants to apply that experience to hardware operating at orbital scale.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
• 10+ years of experience in hardware design, power electronics, or embedded systems in a product development environment.
• Track record of designing and shipping complex electronic products through development into production.
• Experience designing multi-layer PCBs with high-speed digital interfaces and mixed-signal power distribution; proficiency in Altium, Cadence, or equivalent.
• Hands-on experience designing and integrating high-speed Ethernet switch hardware, including network processors (NPUs), SerDes interfaces, and optical or copper PHY technologies.
• Strong knowledge of power supply design (DC-DC converters, LDOs, sequencing, transient analysis) with hands-on SPICE simulation experience.
• Experience with embedded microprocessor design (ARM, RISC-V, or similar) including BSP integration and peripheral bus bring-up (I2C, SPI, UART, CAN).
• Practical EMI/EMC mitigation and signal/power integrity analysis experience.
• Excellent technical documentation and communication skills.

Nice To Haves

• Master's degree in Electrical or Computer Engineering.
• 15+ years of relevant experience.
• Experience with radiation effects on electronics (SEE, TID, displacement damage) and mitigation techniques.
• Experience designing electronics for space, aviation, or other high-reliability thermal-vacuum environments.
• Experience with FPGA or ASIC integration in board management or data-path contexts.
• Background in production hardware including DFM/DFT practices, supply chain coordination, and yield optimization.
• Hands-on environmental qualification testing (TVAC, vibration, EMI/EMC).

Responsibilities

• Architect BMC subsystems using MPSoC, ARM, or RISC-V microprocessors to monitor line card health, thermal sensors, and voltage rails.
• Design and integrate low-level communication buses (I2C, SPI, PMBus, SMBus, RS-485, CAN) for hardware telemetry and sequencing control.
• Develop hardware watchdog circuits and redundant boot sequences for fault recovery.
• Enable in-flight firmware reprogrammability via ground link, including secure update and rollback mechanisms.
• Architect high-reliability power distribution with autonomous sequencing, redundant paths (e.g., ORing controllers), and fault isolation to eliminate single points of failure.
• Specify and integrate radiation-hardened or radiation-tolerant components rated for SEE and TID in the target orbital environment.
• Design power stages for thermal-vacuum operation, emphasizing high-efficiency topologies and conduction/radiation thermal transfer.
• Architect low-noise power trees using high-PSRR LDOs and multi-stage LC filtering to protect sensitive analog and high-speed digital lanes.
• Lead SPICE-based transient analysis and hardware validation of load step responses, switching transients, and voltage ripple to millivolt-level tolerances.
• Develop EMI/EMC mitigation strategies — grounding architecture, decoupling optimization, power/signal plane isolation — to prevent crosstalk between power distribution and high-speed data paths.
• Lead multi-layer PCB design for switch line cards: stackup definition, impedance-controlled routing, thermal management, and DFM.
• Manage CCA BOM procurement, vendor coordination, and assembly oversight.
• Integrate BSPs, SDKs, and device drivers for Ethernet switching and network processor components in collaboration with firmware and software teams.
• Architect and bring up high-performance Ethernet switching systems, including NPU/switch ASIC integration, PHY and SerDes tuning, VLAN configuration, and MAC-level validation across high-density line cards.
• Resolve complex hardware-software interface issues across L1 and L2, including physical layer bring-up, transceiver integration, and MAC-level debugging.
• Lead factory acceptance testing, physical layer validation (optical transceivers, high-density copper), and commissioning of switch hardware.

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)
• 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