Senior Motor Controls Lead Engineer – Lunar Permanence Verified today

About the role

This position is part of the Lunar Permanence business unit, which develops Blue Origin's Blue Moon landers. You will serve as Senior Motor Controls Lead Engineer on the Core Avionics team, owning the technical baseline for a family of embedded motor controllers reused across multiple vehicles and mechanisms in lunar surface transport.

This is a hands-on engineering role. You will own requirements, architecture, interfaces, and technical decisions while working directly with controller hardware in the lab through bring-up, integration, troubleshooting, verification, and qualification. You will debug real hardware and resolve issues across electronics, firmware, sensors, actuators, and system interfaces.

Responsibilities

• Serve as lead controls engineer for a family of embedded motor controllers, owning technical baseline across requirements, architecture, interfaces, verification, and lifecycle documentation
• Define and maintain reusable motor control architectures for application across multiple mechanisms, vehicles, and mission use cases
• Partner with vehicle and subsystem teams to understand mission and mechanism needs, including performance, environmental, fault tolerance, operability, safety, and integration requirements
• Develop control solutions for lunar valves, latches, pumps, fans, and blowers
• Work directly with controller hardware in the lab, supporting bench bring-up, checkout, integration, troubleshooting, and failure investigation
• Debug issues spanning hardware and software boundaries using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, power supplies, DAQ systems, and HIL/bench test setups
• Define and manage interfaces between motor controllers and motors, resolvers/encoders/sensors, vehicle power, avionics networks, and system control functions
• Drive fault-tolerant control strategies including safe-state behavior, fault detection/isolation/recovery, built-in test, degraded modes, and health telemetry
• Plan and execute verification efforts, including test strategy, procedure development, hardware bring-up, integration support, environmental test support, and qualification closure
• Review hardware designs, schematics, layouts, component selections, and test results in collaboration with electrical design engineers
• Coordinate with systems, firmware, electrical, mechanical, safety, reliability, manufacturing, and test teams to ensure successful product delivery
• Communicate technical status, risks, issues, and trade decisions to peers, management, and program stakeholders
• Support technical reviews and ensure actions, risks, and open issues are tracked to resolution

Minimum qualifications

• B.S. in electrical engineering, aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, or another relevant technical field
• Significant experience developing and delivering motor control or motor drive systems for stepper, BLDC, or similar electromechanical actuator applications
• Experience with embedded control electronics in safety-critical, high-reliability, or mission-critical environments
• Experience owning or leading a technical baseline, including requirements, interfaces, design trades, verification planning, and configuration-controlled product documentation
• Experience anchoring plant models and verifying control system performance and stability margin in a highly regulated industry
• Hands-on experience working with control hardware in the lab, including bring-up, integration, test, troubleshooting, and testing of embedded electromechanical systems
• Experience designing or evaluating fault-tolerant architectures and fault response behavior for embedded control systems
• Demonstrated ability as a technical lead
• Strong written, verbal, and presentation communication skills

Preferred qualifications

• M.S. or Ph.D. in electrical engineering, aerospace engineering, computer engineering, robotics, controls, or a related field
• Experience with spacecraft or aerospace mechanism controllers such as gimbals, valve actuators, pump drives, solar array drive assemblies, or deployable systems
• Experience with hardware bring-up and debug of motor controller electronics, including mixed-signal, digital, and power interfaces
• Experience reviewing or contributing to electronics hardware design, including schematic review, PCB layout review, parts selection, design-for-test, or design-for-manufacture
• Experience with FMEA, FTA, reliability analysis, hazard analysis, or safety-critical development practices
• Experience with field oriented control, trapezoidal control, sensorless control, position and velocity control, dual-wound motors, and mechanism control
• Experience with qualification, acceptance, and environmental test campaigns
• Familiarity with systems engineering and requirements management tools such as Jama or similar platforms
• Experience working in a highly integrated development environment with firmware, electrical, systems, and test teams

Compensation

Base pay range for CA and WA applicants: $183,193.00 to $256,469.85. Other site ranges may differ.

Employment details

Applicants for employment must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident, or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum.

Background check required for all positions.