Turbomachinery Tech Lead

Blue Origin • Huntsville, AL

12d • $169,624 - $237,473

About The Position

This role is part of Blue Origin’s Engines business unit, focused on designing, developing, manufacturing, and testing engines and propulsion systems. As the technical authority for turbomachinery products, the Tech Lead owns the technical development roadmap, sets performance baselines, and establishes design processes and analytical rigor. The role partners with the Branch Lead to baseline products at each lifecycle phase and ensure turbomachinery design decisions are informed by—and inform—system-level performance and operability.

This is a hands-on technical architecture and decision-making position, not a management role. It calls for deep analytical capability and the judgment to establish standards, adjudicate trades, and represent the branch in system-level forums. The successful candidate will help positively impact safe human spaceflight and must have passion for Blue Origin’s mission and vision. Relocation is provided, and travel is expected up to 25% of the time.

Requirements

• M.S. in Mechanical Engineering or Aerospace Engineering, with emphasis on turbomachinery, fluid mechanics, or thermodynamics.
• 10+ years of experience in turbomachinery design and analysis for aerospace propulsion systems, such as turbopumps, gas turbines, or power turbines.
• 5+ years with technical decision-making authority over multi-discipline turbomachinery development.
• Ability to perform or critically evaluate meanline aerodynamic design, CFD, secondary flow and seal modeling, structural analysis (static and fatigue), dynamic loading and forced response (including Campbell diagrams and modal analysis), and rotordynamics.
• Understanding of margins required for safe turbomachinery designs across the relevant disciplines.
• Knowledge of how turbomachinery performance characteristics propagate into system-level behavior and vice versa.
• Demonstrated experience establishing design processes, analysis standards, and margin frameworks for turbomachinery hardware programs.
• Track record of taking turbomachinery products from concept through hardware with personal accountability for the technical baseline.
• Proficiency with commercial analysis tools (ANSYS suite or equivalent) and scripting for analysis automation; Python is preferred.
• Familiarity with industry standards, including relevant AIAA/AGMA design practices.
• Experience working in cross-disciplinary engineering teams.
• Track record of taking ownership, showing resilience in the face of challenges, and consistently delivering results.
• Passion for Blue Origin’s mission and vision.

Nice To Haves

• 15+ years of relevant industry experience.
• Experience with rocket propulsion turbomachinery (LOX/LH2, LOX/RP-1, LOX/CH4, or similar).
• Experience with closed-loop cycle turbomachinery designs and systems.
• Familiarity with additive manufacturing for turbomachinery components, including blisks, impellers, and housings.
• Experience with non-traditional rotor support systems, including dry gas seals, hydrostatic bearings, and foil bearings.
• Experience with transient operability analysis, including spool-up, load rejection, and thermal transients and their effects on turbomachinery reliability and life.
• Familiarity with NASA GFSSP, Sinda/FLUINT, or equivalent flow network solvers.
• Experience with parametric cost modeling and design-to-cost trades.
• Prior experience at a rocket propulsion or gas turbine OEM.
• Demonstrated use of, or genuine enthusiasm to adopt, modern AI-assisted engineering tools (e.g., LLM-based design, analysis, or scripting assistants integrated into the daily development environment).

Responsibilities

• Serve as the technical authority for turbomachinery products from concept through qualification and production.
• Own the turbomachinery technical development roadmap, defining the sequence of trades, analyses, and decisions needed to mature each product.
• Establish turbomachinery design guidelines, key design parameters (KDPs), and margin requirements for each technical discipline.
• Define analysis methods, validation rigor, and documentation expectations appropriate to each lifecycle phase.
• Adjudicate turbomachinery architecture trades, including staging, speed, machine type, rotor support, seal selection, and configuration.
• Own the bidirectional interface between turbomachinery design and system performance, including the effects of design conditions and performance targets on system operability and of system ConOps on turbomachinery function, performance, and reliability.
• Identify turbomachinery-driven constraints on system operability and work with systems engineers to resolve or accommodate them.
• Work with the Branch Lead to baseline turbomachinery products at each lifecycle gate and define technical content and success criteria for design reviews.
• Own the turbomachinery performance baseline, including predictions, margins, and validated models that constitute the technical basis for each product.
• Perform or direct analysis across meanline aerodynamic design, CFD, secondary flow and seal modeling, structural analysis, dynamic loading and forced response, and rotordynamic analysis.
• Establish and enforce the margins required for safe designs in each discipline.
• Define the correlation basis, property databases, and validation anchors used by the team, requiring traceability to heritage data or published sources.
• Drive continuous improvement of analysis tools, methods, and automation.
• Represent the turbomachinery branch in program-level reviews, trade studies, and key decision points.
• Mentor engineers in turbomachinery fundamentals, engineering judgment, and the rationale behind design standards.
• Support hardware build, assembly, acceptance testing, and anomaly investigation; provide engineering dispositions for non-conforming turbomachinery hardware.
• Develop and maintain design requirements and documentation, and contribute technical artifacts to subsystem and program gated reviews (SRR, PDR, CDR, MRR, TRR).

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 all regular employees working at least 20 hours per week
• Paid time off: 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 individual contributions and company results, or other factors at the company’s discretion; bonus amounts and eligibility are not guaranteed and may change or be canceled.

What This Job Offers

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