System Safety Engineer III - New Glenn

BLUE ORIGIN•West Melbourne, WA

About The Position

Blue Origin is hiring a fully independent system safety engineer to support the development and operations of New Glenn, a reusable heavy-lift orbital launch vehicle designed to carry people and payloads. The role owns end-to-end safety assessments for assigned vehicle elements and subsystems, including hazard analysis, failure-mode identification, risk quantification, and safety-case development. It also contributes to systems engineering integration, verification, and certification, helping embed safety in the design process and bridging the SQMA safety organization with element-level systems engineering teams. The position reports within AERS Engineering & Systems on the New Glenn GS1/9E program. The engineer leads hazard analyses and safety assessments, develops safety requirements and design constraints, maintains hazard tracking, and supports safety reviews and investigations. The role also contributes to requirements decomposition, interface management, verification planning, configuration control, cross-subsystem integration, and certification activities. Safety-related work includes experience with FAA 14 CFR Part 450 public safety requirements.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Systems Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field.
5–10 years of combined system safety and systems engineering experience, with demonstrated progression in scope and complexity.
Hands-on experience authoring hazard-analysis artifacts on real programs, including FHA, FMECA, FTA, CCA, and PHA.
Working knowledge of systems engineering processes, including requirements decomposition, verification planning, interface management, and configuration control.
Experience with at least two of the following safety standards and regulatory frameworks: MIL-STD-882, MIL-STD-1629, SAE ARP4761, NASA-STD-8719, and FAA 14 CFR Part 450.
Ability to quantify risk using probabilistic methods, reliability modeling, and failure-rate databases such as MIL-HDBK-217, NPRD/EPRD, or equivalent.
Strong technical writing skills, including the ability to author hazard analyses, safety cases, and technical decision memos that withstand review-board scrutiny.
Excellent communication skills, including the ability to present safety findings to program leadership, design teams, and external reviewers such as the FAA and customers.
Must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident, or lawfully admitted to the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum.
Required to complete Blue’s Standard Background Check; additional checks may apply to certain job profiles.

Nice To Haves

Master’s or Ph.D. in a relevant engineering field; a master’s degree is strongly preferred.
Experience with launch-vehicle or human-rated spacecraft safety programs.
Experience with reusable vehicle systems and understanding how reuse affects safety, including fatigue, degradation, and refurbishment-inspection adequacy.
INCOSE CSEP or ESEP certification.
Familiarity with customer certification requirements processes.
Experience with fracture-control programs, such as NASA-STD-5019 or equivalent.
Programming skills in Python or MATLAB for reliability modeling and data analysis.
Experience with AI/ML tools for engineering analysis or automation.

Responsibilities

Lead and execute Functional Hazard Assessments (FHA/FHAA), Preliminary Hazard Analyses (PHA), and Subsystem Hazard Analyses (SSHA) for assigned vehicle elements.
Author and maintain subsystem FMECAs; derive Critical Items Lists and basic events for Fault Tree Analyses.
Develop and maintain Fault Tree Analyses for safety-critical functions; quantify unreliability and identify single-point failures and common-cause vulnerabilities.
Perform Common Cause Analyses and Zonal Safety Assessments to identify latent failure interactions.
Own hazard sheets and tracking for assigned subsystems; drive hazard closure through design changes, operational controls, or accepted risk.
Develop safety requirements and safety-related design constraints, flow them into DNG requirements, and track verification closure.
Support Architecture Safety Assessments, substantiating safety intent, redundancy, and independence claims.
Represent system safety at design reviews; author safety review packages and present findings to safety review boards.
Assess the safety impact of Engineering Change Requests and nonconformance dispositions.
Lead or support mishap and anomaly investigation safety analysis, including contributing-cause identification, barrier analysis, and corrective-action adequacy assessment.
Contribute to element-level systems engineering for 9E GS1, including requirements decomposition, interface management, verification planning, and configuration control.
Lead verification campaigns for safety-critical requirements, including planning, execution, and closure of verification evidence.
Perform cross-subsystem integration analysis at vehicle interfaces where safety and systems engineering intersect.
Represent systems engineering and safety at program-level forums and drive closure of safety-related actions.
Author technical decision memos and trade-study reports for safety-critical design choices.
Support certification activities, including Element Design Reviews, Pre-Ship Reviews, and Flight Readiness Reviews, with safety-case artifacts.
Contribute to customer certification safety documentation as the program scales toward national security missions.

Benefits

Medical insurance
Dental insurance
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, possible benefits and bonuses based on individual contributions, company results, or other factors; eligibility and amounts are not guaranteed and may change or be canceled.