NPI Systems Engineer - Solar Center of Excellence Verified today

Role Overview

This role is part of Advanced Concepts and Enterprise Engineering (ACE), supporting Blue Origin's mission. You will own end-to-end integration verification for the New Product Introduction (NPI) lines that bring next-generation spacecraft solar arrays into production at unprecedented rates and reliability. This is an architecture-level opportunity for green-field design and process integration, where the equipment is still being specified, the flow has not been locked, and the architecture remains open to decision.

What You Will Own

You will work on a team of manufacturing, process, and ground support equipment engineers, each owning individual process areas: cell interconnection, lamination and bonding, mechanism assembly, tooling, fixturing, and automation. You own the interfaces between them and the overall performance of the manufacturing system as a whole. Your focus is the value stream as a system, from raw material intake through wing integration, verified end to end as scalable and stable for high-volume production.

You will use data to make enhancements to solar array design in collaboration with design engineers vertically integrated within the organization.

Key Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end integration verification of the NPI value stream and the interfaces between process areas: material handoff, fixture and datum compatibility, data continuity, environmental constraints, storage and transport
• Build and maintain capacity, availability, and throughput models that determine whether the value stream closes at rate; identify constraints and capital decisions that rate capability depends on
• Characterize how the integrated system actually behaves, hands-on with developing and implementing instrumentation, including how variation in one process area propagates to yield and throughput downstream
• Establish the rate conditions design, processes, and equipment must be verified against: takt, capability and availability targets, test throughput, sampling posture, capacity margin, and the verification methods that close them
• Author production architecture requirements that make those targets achievable: how far each process can be modularized, how much capacity margin is needed, and how sameness between parallel modules is specified, verified, and controlled
• Derive rate and interface requirements that equipment and tooling specifications must satisfy; co-author critical capital specifications with process and GSE engineers
• Build producibility feedback tooling that quantifies the production consequence of a design choice early enough to influence the design
• Carry proven changes from NPI toward production with process capability evidence; support the technical risk work behind them: PFMEA linkage, escape exposure, detection latency, requalification impact
• Partner with design engineering on producibility trades, Operations on production architecture and module commissioning, and mission assurance on acceptance test strategy at rate

What You Must Have

• Bachelor's degree in Industrial, Manufacturing, Mechanical, Electrical, or Systems Engineering, or equivalent technical discipline
• 8+ years of experience in manufacturing, industrial, process, or production engineering (or 5+ years with an advanced degree)
• Experience industrializing a product from development into higher-rate production, including hands-on work with automated production equipment
• Demonstrated ownership of a multi-stage value stream as a system: flow, takt balance, aggregate capability, and the interfaces between stages, not only individual processes or stations
• Hands-on experience building and defending quantitative models of a production system: capacity, availability, throughput, and process capability
• Technical credibility with specialist process and equipment engineers: the depth to challenge capability claims, automation feasibility, and supplier specifications on their own terms
• Ability to verify and influence work owned by other teams without direct line authority, and to communicate findings that change design and capital decisions
• 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

Prior aerospace or systems engineering experience is not required. This role needs industrialization depth in a high-rate, high-reliability production environment. Candidates from semiconductor, battery manufacturing, medical device, automotive, or comparable industries are encouraged to apply.

What We Prefer

• Industrializing a product where both high rate and high reliability were binding: semiconductor, battery manufacturing, medical device, automotive safety-critical, aerospace at rate, or comparable
• Working inside a pilot, NPI, or process-development line built with production-specification equipment, and carrying proven changes from it into a qualified production baseline
• Greenfield production or facility planning where little prior definition existed
• Test-capacity-limited production, where acceptance test throughput constrains line architecture: environmental chambers, vibration, EMI/EMC, flash/IV, electroluminescence
• SPC and process capability, measurement system analysis, PFMEA and control plans, and gated qualification models (PPAP/APQP, IQ/OQ/PQ, or equivalent)
• Specifying or developing high-rate production automation, including modularity, reconfigurability, and data architecture requirements
• Spacecraft solar arrays, photovoltaics, deployment mechanisms, precision mechanisms, or comparable high-reliability hardware
• Carrying an industrialization methodology across more than one product or program, rather than solving a single line and stopping
• Developing analytical tools or automated design-for-manufacturing feedback that enable rapid engineering decisions
• Familiarity with AS9100, ISO 9001, APQP, PPAP, or other production quality systems
• Experience supporting supplier readiness and supplier development

Role Details

• Location: Hutto, TX
• Relocation provided
• Travel expected up to 25% of the time
• Interviews will include a technical assessment