Sr Principal Thermal Engineer

BLUE ORIGIN•Denver, CO

1d•$205,695 - $287,972

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! This role is part of Advanced Concepts and Enterprise Engineering (ACE), supporting Blue Origin’s mission of millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth. The team fosters innovation and drives engineering workflows of the future, shared solutions and standards, simplicity and lower costs, and manufacturable design. Join Blue Origin as we build infrastructure in space for the benefit of Earth. We’re developing a satellite constellation of orbital data centers designed to transform how compute infrastructure is deployed and leveraged. You will own one of the most challenging subsystems on a space data center - the thermal architecture – responsible for design, analysis, testing, and flight execution of the thermal control systems for one of the highest-power spacecraft ever built. You will be expected to operate with a high degree of autonomy, leading this critical effort from the front. It's a hands-on leadership role that combines deep individual technical contribution and leading the thermal engineering team. Expect to pursue novel concepts, test them fast on the ground, and validate them in orbit.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent experience.
10+ years of hands-on thermal engineering: design, analysis, hardware development, and test.
Strong command of thermal analysis tools such as Thermal Desktop, Ansys, or equivalent.
Experience with passive and active thermal control in a demanding environment: space, power, automotive, data center, food/manufacturing, or petroleum.
Comfortable leading and mentoring junior engineers while staying deeply hands-on.
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 formally leading a thermal engineering team.
Experience with a variety of spacecraft or aircraft thermal management approaches and components: cold plates, coolant loops, pumps, heat exchangers, thermal interfaces, insulation, heaters, large lightweight deployable radiators, heat pipes, oscillating heat pipes, and vapor chambers.
Experience with high-power thermal systems: pumped fluid loops, large radiators, industrial heat exchangers, data center cooling, power-plant systems, automotive thermal, refrigeration, or petroleum process systems.
Experience rapidly leading development from architecture through qualification and production or flight.
Familiarity or fluency with AI tools and their application for design optimization or analysis.
Master's or Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering or a related discipline with a focus on thermal sciences.

Responsibilities

Own the thermal architecture: active and passive thermal control across the spacecraft.
Design the thermal systems from the computing interface: to the radiator
Lead the hard trades: performance, mass, cost, reliability, manufacturability, schedule, and operational constraints.
Push novel concepts: prototype rapidly, test on the ground, and validate in orbit.
Model and correlate: build and correlate thermal models for spacecraft, payloads, and subsystems against real test and flight data.
Deliver flight hardware end to end: concept through manufacturing, integration, test, qualification, and launch, improving across successive spacecraft.