Sr. Radiation Effects Engineer, Project Sunrise Verified today

Blue Origin · 2 Locations · Electronics · first seen 2026-10-13

About the Role

This role is part of Advanced Concepts and Enterprise Engineering (ACE), supporting Blue Origin's development of Sunrise, a satellite constellation of orbital data centers designed to transform how compute infrastructure is deployed in space.

You will lead the effort of ensuring cutting-edge commercial hardware can operate reliably in the harsh environment of space. You will be responsible for the entire radiation effects lifecycle for the complete compute payload, from characterizing the environment and developing novel mitigation strategies to planning and executing test campaigns for all advanced hardware. This is a mission-critical role for an engineer excited to solve first-principles problems and establish the Radiation Hardness Assurance (RHA) playbook for deploying high-performance COTS electronics in space.

Responsibilities

Develop, maintain, and execute the Radiation Hardness Assurance (RHA) Plan for the entire compute payload.
Characterize the mission's orbital radiation environment using tools like CREME96, SPENVIS, or other approaches and translate those models into component-level test requirements.
Define and own the end-to-end radiation mitigation strategy, establishing a design margin policy and working with designers on part selection, shielding, and fault tolerance schemes.
Translate device-level single event effects (SEEs) into system-level impacts such as data corruption, reset rates, or degraded performance, and work with systems engineers to bound their effect.
Plan, schedule, and execute radiation effects test campaigns at accelerator facilities, managing the long-lead logistics required for beam time.
Maintain the radiation risk register, part-by-part test status, and all supporting analyses to inform design reviews and flight-readiness decisions.
Collaborate with hardware, software, and EEE parts engineering teams to ensure mitigation strategies are seamlessly integrated into the system design.

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor of Science in Physics, Electrical Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, or a related field.
6+ years of professional experience as a Radiation Effects Engineer for space applications.
Deep understanding of radiation effects, including Total Ionizing Dose (TID), Single Event Effects (SEE), and displacement damage, particularly in advanced CMOS nodes.
Demonstrated, hands-on experience qualifying Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components for radiation tolerance.
Experience using industry-standard radiation environment modeling tools.
Must be a 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.

Preferred Qualifications

Master's or Ph.D. in a relevant discipline.
10-14+ years of experience in a senior radiation effects role.
Direct experience planning and executing test campaigns at major accelerator facilities.
Specific experience analyzing radiation effects on a variety of complex hardware, such as SoCs, FPGAs, GPUs, high-density memory, or high-speed transceivers.
Familiarity with relevant industry standards for radiation testing and qualification (e.g., MIL-STD-883, JEDEC, NASA EEE-INST-002).
Proven ability to lead a comprehensive test and qualification campaign from planning to completion.

Compensation and Benefits

Base Pay Range: CO applicants $144,179.00 to $201,849.90; WA applicants $156,802.00 to $219,522.45. Other site ranges may differ.

Benefits include medical, dental, vision, basic and supplemental 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 (20+ hours/week), up to four weeks paid time off per year based on scheduled hours, and up to 14 company-paid holidays. Bonus eligibility dependent on role type and job level.