Senior Systems Engineer

Blue Origin • Altadena, CA

5d

About The Position

As a Senior Systems Engineer at Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company, you will serve as the Responsible Engineer for a robotic spaceflight mission. You will drive technical deliverables and be accountable for technical success throughout the project lifecycle, with minimal oversight. You will act as the primary technical interface to the customer and lead agile, cross-functional teams in rapidly designing, building, and testing novel systems with limited resources.

Honeybee Robotics develops robotic systems for space exploration, including spacecraft and robotic systems for lunar and Martian surface missions and deep-space science instruments. The team delivers flight-ready hardware for planetary exploration and science missions.

The position is based at Honeybee Robotics’ Southern California location. Applicants must meet the stated U.S. citizenship or immigration-status eligibility requirements.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering or a related technical field.
• At least 8 years of experience in the design, development, fabrication, and testing of complex systems.
• Experience owning the full design cycle of a complete system, from requirements through verification, with minimal oversight.
• Working knowledge across multiple functional areas, such as avionics, mechanisms, structures, thermal, software, and test, sufficient to challenge assumptions and identify design flaws.
• Experience serving as the primary technical contact for customers and on cross-organizational projects, with strong verbal, written, and graphical communication skills.
• Experience leading cross-functional teams in a fast-paced, hardware-centric development environment where technical and schedule decisions are closely linked.
• Advanced proficiency in requirements development and management, interface control, verification planning, change control, risk management, anomaly investigation, and supporting tools.
• 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

• Master’s degree in engineering or a related technical field.
• Direct experience leading or owning systems on spaceflight missions or programs, with familiarity with NASA or other relevant industry standards and practices for spaceflight systems.
• Experience with space robotics systems, including rovers, robotic arms, and/or science instruments.
• Ability to work hands-on across the full hardware lifecycle, from bench-level troubleshooting to system-level integration and environmental testing.
• Experience mentoring engineers and developing or improving systems engineering processes and tools.

Responsibilities

• Translate mission objectives into a verifiable, pragmatic system architecture and lead cross-disciplinary trade studies balancing performance and reliability with schedule and cost.
• Own system requirements, interface control documents (ICDs), and performance budgets throughout the project lifecycle, including validation and verification activities.
• Partner with program managers to manage trade-offs among technical scope, schedule, and budget, and provide risk assessments, resource needs, and estimates for program plans.
• Serve as the primary technical interface to customers, translate changing needs into verifiable requirements, and communicate the schedule, cost, and risk impacts of changes.
• Contribute hands-on to design, analysis, integration, and testing; author verification plans and lead test campaigns.
• Decompose system goals into actionable tasks and provide daily guidance to a multidisciplinary team.
• Own the system technical risk register and lead root-cause analysis and corrective actions for integration and test anomalies.
• Tailor reliability and safety standards to the mission’s risk posture and ensure the design is robust for spaceflight and planetary environments.

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 based on company discretion.

What This Job Offers

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