Lead Configuration Engineer – Lunar Vehicles Verified today

The Role

You are a Senior Configuration Engineer for the Blue Moon MK1 Cargo Lander, part of Blue Origin's Lunar Permanence business unit. You sit at the intersection of deep technical design knowledge and configuration ownership: you drive cross-disciplinary trade studies that define the long-term evolution of the vehicle, while owning the configuration baseline and integration integrity of the current MK1 design.

This spans the full lifecycle of vehicle design. You apply strong working knowledge of vehicle design, structures, mechanical systems, and/or cryogenic upper stage architecture to lead trades on the next-gen MK1, balancing technology improvement, cost reduction, and manufacturing realities against what already exists and flies today. You maintain rigorous configuration management discipline over the current vehicle, ensuring design changes, ECRs, and baselines are coherent, traceable, and feed forward into the long-term architecture plan.

You operate as a senior technical authority and informal leader across the integrated team: setting technical direction, mentoring engineers, and driving consensus across Structures, Fluids, Thermal, GN&C, Avionics, and Manufacturing stakeholders.

What You'll Do

Next-Gen Architecture and Trades

• Lead cross-disciplinary trade studies that define the long-term evolution of MK1 Cargo Lander architecture, weighing performance, cost, manufacturability, and schedule
• Develop and maintain a long-term improvement roadmap for MK1, identifying where next-gen architecture changes deliver meaningful cost savings, technology upgrades, or manufacturing simplification
• Evaluate how new technologies, materials, or manufacturing methods could be incorporated into the next-gen design without destabilizing the current flight configuration
• Apply deep knowledge of vehicle design, structures, mechanical systems, and/or cryogenic upper stage design to assess technical feasibility and risk of proposed architecture changes
• Translate high-level program goals (cost, cadence, performance) into concrete configuration and design trade options for leadership and cross-functional review
• Partner with manufacturing, production engineering, and supply chain to ensure next-gen architecture decisions reflect real-world fabrication, assembly, and tooling constraints

Configuration Ownership and Integration

• Own configuration management for the current MK1 vehicle baseline across structural, mechanical, fluids, and electrical subsystems
• Lead technical review and disposition of Engineering Change Requests (ECRs) within your scope, ensuring completeness, technical accuracy, and configuration integrity
• Define and maintain interface configurations between subsystems, including model-based definitions and control documents
• Resolve cross-subsystem configuration conflicts and dependencies, driving decisions when stakeholders disagree
• Ensure configuration baselines and documentation are ready to support major design reviews, integration milestones, and downstream material requirements planning
• Track and report configuration and architecture trade status, including schedule, risk, and key technical issues, to program and engineering leadership

Technical Leadership

• Serve as a go-to technical authority for MK1 configuration and architecture questions across the engineering organization
• Provide informal technical leadership and mentorship to engineers working configuration, integration, and design trade activities
• Champion configuration management best practices and standards across the team
• Build alignment across Structures, Fluids, Thermal, GN&C, Avionics, and Manufacturing stakeholders on configuration decisions and trade outcomes

What We're Looking For

Required

• B.S. degree in engineering (Aerospace, Mechanical, or related discipline) and 10+ years of experience in spacecraft or launch vehicle mechanical design, configuration, and layout engineering; or M.S. with 8+ years
• Deep working knowledge in at least one of: vehicle structural design, mechanical systems design, or cryogenic upper stage design, with working familiarity across the others
• Demonstrated experience leading architecture-level or vehicle-level trade studies, from early concept through down-selection
• Demonstrated configuration control experience on developed products in aerospace, launch vehicle, or comparable highly-regulated industries
• Strong track record of cross-functional influence and consensus-building, driving technical decisions through credibility and judgment
• Strong 3-D CAD and visualization tool experience, with ability to assess and critique design solutions directly
• Understanding of how manufacturing, assembly, and integration realities should shape design and configuration decisions

Preferred

• Experience specifically with cryogenic propulsion or upper stage systems
• Strong GD&T skills and experience with large tolerance stack-up analysis
• Experience using PTC Creo and Windchill
• Experience driving cost-reduction or producibility-improvement initiatives on a flying or near-flying vehicle program
• Demonstrated ability to balance long-term architecture vision, near-term configuration discipline, and business or market needs on the same program
• Knowledge of aerospace vehicle fabrication and assembly techniques and related quality control concepts

Compensation and Employment

Base pay range for Washington applicants: $145,188.00 to $203,263.20 (other site ranges may differ).

Employment type: Full-time. Applicants must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted as a refugee or granted asylum.

Benefits include medical, dental, vision, life insurance, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability, 401(k) with company match up to 5%, Education Support Program, stock options for regular employees, and up to four weeks paid time off plus up to 14 company-paid holidays per year.