Senior Mission Operations Engineer Verified today

The Role

As Senior Mission Operations Engineer, you will serve as Mission Operations Lead for a deep space mission that will cruise to Mars, insert into orbit, and operate for years as a high-rate relay carrying data between Mars assets and Earth. You will lead small teams of mission operations engineers throughout the program lifecycle and collaborate extensively with engineers across space and ground segments.

What You'll Own

• Lead the mission from contract award through closeout, owning operations scope, schedule, budget, risk, reporting, and customer relationship
• Own the operations concept across all mission phases: launch, Earth departure, interplanetary cruise, orbit insertion, transfer to final service orbit, relay commissioning, and steady-state service
• Deliver contract operations data products including mission operations plan, operations data book, user guide, and flight operations procedure library
• Serve as operations point of contact for the customer through development and early orbit
• Develop mission plans, operations concepts, tools, and processes for effective operations under significant one-way light time
• Build commanding approach around onboard command sequences and time-tagged activity, planning for solar conjunction outages and extended loss-of-signal periods
• Collaborate with ground segment team on deep space ground station integration, scheduling, data link, radiometric tracking, and compatibility testing
• Lead small teams in developing detailed operations procedures, executables, telemetry displays, and technical documentation
• Conduct testing and validation of operations products using hardware and software simulation environments spanning space and ground domains
• Drive operations efficiency and reliability through automation and AI/ML technologies
• Support systems engineering in developing spacecraft concept of operations
• Create detailed test procedures to validate end-to-end system capabilities
• Coordinate staffing for mission operations events and work with training team for personnel certification
• Support mission readiness activities including mission rehearsals, timeline development, and post-launch testing
• Provide real-time leadership during spacecraft launch and early orbit phase with on-console shift work from Blue Origin's mission control facilities in VA
• Monitor spacecraft state-of-health across all subsystems, perform trending and analyses, and track configurations
• Support troubleshooting and resolution of on-orbit anomalies as part of anomaly response team
• Foster continuous improvement by contributing, tracking, and implementing lessons-learned
• Represent operations to customer at gated milestone reviews and routine performance reporting
• Provide instruction and mentorship to early career engineers

Required Qualifications

• B.S. in Aerospace, Computer Science, Systems, or related fields
• 3+ years of experience managing technical teams
• 10+ years of proven experience in spacecraft operations development and execution, including on-console leadership of on-orbit operations as a flight director or comparable role
• Demonstrated ownership of scope, schedule, and budget for a mission or major deliverable, including direct accountability to an external customer
• Direct experience operating a spacecraft beyond Earth orbit on a deep space, lunar, or planetary mission, including at least one of: interplanetary cruise operations, planetary orbit insertion, or sustained operations at a planetary destination
• Experience planning and executing operations under one-way light time of minutes or more, where vehicle is flown through onboard command sequences and telemetry assessed after the fact
• Experience developing spacecraft operations products including procedures, telemetry displays, scripts, and technical documents
• Experience with configuration and product data management
• Excellent verbal and written communications skills, including ability to make persuasive presentations to external customers at gated milestone reviews
• Ability to earn trust, build positive professional relationships, contribute to culture of inclusion, and collaborate with individuals of diverse backgrounds
• Must be U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into U.S. as refugee or granted asylum

Desired Qualifications

• M.S. in Space Systems, Computer Science, or Aerospace Engineering
• Mars mission operations experience, including familiarity with relay pass scheduling services and interfaces
• Experience operating a relay or shared communications asset, including user service planning, pass deconfliction, and store-and-forward delivery
• Experience planning around solar conjunction and extended communications outages
• Experience with Deep Space Network interfaces and processes, including scheduling, data link, and radiometric tracking data delivery
• Experience with NASA civil space programs and their operations deliverable and review expectations
• Proficiency with command-and-control scripting languages such as Python, SPELL, STOL, or JAS
• Experience working with virtualized ground software including Command and Control, Mission Planning, Flight Dynamics, Electronic Procedures, and Software Simulators
• Experience with mission planning and contact planning tools
• Experience managing projects using traditional and agile methodologies
• Experience as operations lead or project manager on competitively awarded government contract
• Experience in full development lifecycle of space systems' ground segments
• Mission analysis, flight planning, and timeline development
• Experience designing and evaluating operational readiness tests integrated with hardware-in-the-loop and software-in-the-loop simulators
• Experience with operational fault and anomaly management
• Experience performing system safety analyses including Functional Hazard Assessments (FHA), Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analyses (FMECA), and Fault Tree Analysis (FTA)

Work Location and Compensation

Based at Reston, VA or Denver, CO office. Relocation is provided. On-console shift work from Blue Origin's mission control facilities in VA during launch, early orbit, orbit insertion, commissioning, and critical mission events.

Base pay range for VA applicants: $156,802.00 - $219,522.45. Base pay range for CO applicants: $144,179.00 - $201,849.90. Other site ranges may differ.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, 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/week
• Paid time off: up to four weeks per year based on weekly scheduled hours, and up to 14 company-paid holidays
• Bonuses based on company's intent to reward individual contributions (amounts and eligibility not guaranteed and subject to change)