Technician - Custom Machinery Assembly III

BLUE ORIGIN•Seattle, WA

1d•$34 - $47•Onsite

About The Position

This role supports the build, commissioning, and sustainment of a family of advanced custom precision machines built entirely in-house at Blue Origin. These are not purchased tools with a service contract behind them — we architect them, build them, instrument them, break them, and make them production-worthy ourselves. Each system is a large-envelope, multi-axis, closed-loop precision platform operating inside a sealed process volume, coordinating motion, thermal, fluid, and optical subsystems to hold micron-class positional accuracy across a meter-scale working envelope — continuously, for weeks at a time, without operator intervention. As a Technician III you are the person who makes that real. You will assemble and align the mechanisms, bring new machines to life, and keep a fleet of them holding tolerance under production load. When a machine goes down, engine hardware stops moving — and you are the first line of response. This is a technician seat on a small team that owns its hardware end to end. You will work shoulder to shoulder with the design engineers who drew the parts you are installing, and your feedback changes the drawings. The machines are in production today and the next-generation configuration is in active design, so you will build new hardware and sustain fielded hardware in the same week. Passion for our mission and vision is required.

Requirements

High school diploma or GED
5+ years of hands-on experience in precision mechanical assembly, industrial machinery maintenance, automation equipment, machine building, or equivalent military technical experience
Demonstrated ability to work from engineering drawings, assembly instructions, schematics, and written procedures with minimal supervision
Proficiency with precision measurement tools — calipers, micrometers, dial indicators, height gauges, feeler gauges — and the judgment to know when a measurement is trustworthy
Experience with mechanical alignment of precision equipment (shafts, rails, stages, or comparable)
Proficiency with hand and power tools, and correct use of calibrated torque equipment
Experience troubleshooting electromechanical systems, including basic use of a multimeter
Ability to read and interpret GD&T callouts on drawings
Demonstrated attention to documentation — recording work accurately and completely in a work order or maintenance system
Ability to earn trust, maintain positive and professional relationships, and contribute to a culture of inclusion
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

Associate degree, technical/trade school certificate, or completed apprenticeship in a mechanical, electromechanical, mechatronics, or industrial maintenance discipline
Experience with servo-driven multi-axis motion systems, including gantry-coupled axes
Experience installing or servicing linear encoder feedback systems and diagnosing intermittent feedback faults
Experience with sealed or controlled-atmosphere enclosures, including sealing methods and leak-rate verification
Experience with pneumatic, hydraulic, or thermal-management fluid systems, including tube bending, fitting installation, and leak checking
Experience commissioning new equipment from mechanically complete through production release
Familiarity with motion controller and PLC interfaces — enough to run a jog, read a fault code, and hold a productive conversation with a controls engineer
Experience with precision metrology equipment (CMM, optical trackers, interferometry)
Certified or certifiable in forklift operation, overhead crane, and rigging
Lockout/tagout, NFPA 70E, or comparable energized-work safety training
Experience using an ERP, MES, or CMMS work-order system to record maintenance and assembly work
Experience training or leading other technicians

Responsibilities

Perform precision mechanical assembly of multi-axis motion subsystems — gantry structures, linear rails and carriages, dual-motor coupled axes, vertical lift stages, traversing mechanisms, and precision blade and wiper assemblies — working from engineering drawings, assembly instructions, and work orders
Install, align, and verify high-resolution linear encoder feedback systems, including read-head air-gap setting, scale alignment, and shield termination
Execute machine alignment and calibration campaigns using precision metrology — dial indicators, height gauges, optical trackers, and coordinate measuring equipment — and iterate measure-correct-remeasure passes until the machine converges inside its accuracy budget
Apply calibrated torque per specification, install and verify fasteners and locking features, and document as-installed values
Assemble, leak-check, and commission fluid and gas subsystems — cooling loops, chillers, gas distribution, purge circuits, filtration, and sealed-volume containment
Route, terminate, and dress cabling and service loops, including continuously flexing cable carriers, with attention to signal integrity and strain relief
Bring new machines up from mechanically complete to production-ready: power-on checks, axis commissioning, subsystem functional verification, and first-article support
Troubleshoot mechanical, electromechanical, pneumatic, and fluid faults on fielded machines to component level, isolating root cause rather than swapping parts until symptoms clear
Perform preventive and corrective maintenance on an operating fleet, including scheduled service, wear-item replacement, and precision component swaps that must preserve alignment
Execute retrofit and upgrade work on machines already in production, where downtime is measured against hardware deliveries
Document all work in the work-order system — as-found and as-left condition, parts consumed, measurements taken, and anomalies observed — to the standard that lets an engineer reconstruct what happened months later
Write and red-line assembly, commissioning, and maintenance procedures based on what actually works on the floor
Support root-cause investigations by capturing data, preserving failed hardware, and contributing direct observation to the analysis
Follow lockout/tagout, confined-space, energized-work, and PPE requirements without exception, and stop work when conditions are unsafe
Train and mentor junior technicians, and serve as a technical resource for assembly and troubleshooting methods