Senior Mechanical Engineer - TeraWave Customer Terminals

Application close date:

At Blue Origin, we envision millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth. We're working to develop reusable, safe, and low-cost space vehicles and systems within a culture of safety, collaboration, and inclusion. Join our team of problem solvers as we add new chapters to the history of spaceflight!

We are seeking a Senior Mechanical Engineer to join the Customer Terminals team and own terminal mechanical design.

This is a founding hire on a young team, and it is a genuinely different job from spacecraft mechanical work. A terminal is a consumer-grade product that has to behave like infrastructure: manufactured in very high volume at an aggressive unit cost, shipped through normal logistics, unboxed and installed by a two-person crew with ordinary tools in a couple of hours, and then left outdoors on a roof to survive years of weather without a service visit. Every one of those constraints is a mechanical constraint.

The design space is unusually rich because the requirements pull against each other:

• It has to survive real weather. Wind and ice and snow loading, hail impact, driving rain, salt-fog corrosion near the coast, UV exposure that degrades polymers and seals, and lightning. The enclosure has to keep water and dust out for the product's full life while remaining radio-transparent where the antenna needs to see the sky - sealing and RF performance are in direct tension, and that tension is yours to resolve.
• It has to reject heat without help. Active phased arrays are power-dense, and unlike a satellite you cannot design a radiator into deep space - you are working with ambient air, solar loading, and a sealed enclosure at the same time. Getting heat out while keeping water out is the central thermal-mechanical problem of the product.
• It has to be liftable and installable. Weight and size are hard human-factors limits, not preferences: if two people cannot safely carry and mount it, the product does not work commercially. Mounting has to adapt to flat roofs, pitched roofs, poles, and walls using standard hardware, and the installation has to be fast, obvious, and hard to get wrong - including cable entry, sealing, strain relief, and grounding done correctly by an installer who has never seen your drawings.
• It has to be cheap to build, at volume. Part count, fastener count, casting and molding decisions, and assembly sequence are evaluated against unit cost and cycle time as seriously as against structural margin. We deliberately reach for terrestrial, COTS, and automotive-industry approaches rather than traditional aerospace practice. This is a design-for-manufacturing role as much as a design role.
• It has to last. Enterprise-grade reliability expectations over a multi-year service life, with no scheduled maintenance, in environments ranging from desert to near-shore to severe winter.

We are developing a family of terminals at different capability and cost points, so you will carry a design from concept through prototype, qualification, and production, then apply what you learn to the next variant. Our RF, antenna, ASIC, electrical, and thermal teams are all in-house - you will co-design with them directly rather than across a supplier boundary. And because the team is small and the product is early, you will help define the mechanical practices, standards, and supplier relationships the program runs on.

• Own mechanical design of customer terminal enclosures, antenna housings, radomes, internal structure, and component mounting provisions, from concept through production release.
• Design for environmental survival - ingress protection, sealing and gasket design, corrosion resistance, UV-stable material selection, impact resistance, and lightning and grounding provisions.
• Design mounting systems and installation hardware for varied site conditions, including roof, pole, and wall mounts, with the anchor and load-path guidance installers need.
• Own structural analysis for wind, ice, snow, and shipping loads, including modal and vibration assessment and safety margin substantiation.
• Partner closely with thermal engineering on enclosure-level thermal design - heat extraction from a sealed housing, heat spreading, thermal interface selection, solar load management, and cold-start behavior under ice and snow.
• Collaborate with RF and antenna engineers on radome and enclosure design, ensuring mechanical and sealing choices preserve antenna performance.
• Drive design for manufacturability, assembly, and test with contract manufacturers and tooling suppliers, including material and process selection, tolerance strategy, and yield at high volume.
• Lead cost reduction across design generations - part consolidation, process changes, and assembly simplification - with measurable results.
• Design for the out-of-box experience: packaging, palletization, shipping protection, human factors, lift and handling, and installation ergonomics.
• Support qualification campaigns, including environmental, structural, shipping, and reliability testing, and correlate analysis to test results.
• Develop and maintain CAD models, drawings, and Bills of Materials in the program's PLM system.
• Contribute to serviceability, tamper resistance, and physical security considerations for equipment deployed at customer premises.
• Present technical content and recommendations at design reviews.
• Help establish mechanical design standards, review practices, and supplier processes for the terminal program.

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering or a related field.
• 7+ years of experience in mechanical design and development of production hardware.
• Proficiency with 3D CAD tools for detailed part and assembly modeling.
• Experience performing structural and thermal analysis using analytical or finite element methods.
• Demonstrated experience designing enclosures or housings for outdoor, weather-exposed, or otherwise harsh service environments.
• Working knowledge of GD&T and engineering drawing standards (ASME Y14.5).
• Strong working knowledge of high-volume manufacturing processes and materials - injection molding, die casting, sheet metal, extrusion, and machining - and of design for manufacturability.
• Experience taking a product from concept through qualification into volume production.
• Experience with PLM and configuration management systems.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to document and defend technical work.
• Ability to work effectively across disciplines with requirements still maturing.

• Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering or a related field.
• Experience designing outdoor telecommunications or RF equipment - antennas, radomes, base station hardware, satellite terminals, or comparable customer-premises equipment.
• Experience with ingress protection and sealing design, gasket and O-ring selection, and IP-rating qualification.
• Experience with environmental qualification to commercial standards, including salt fog, UV, thermal cycling, hail or impact, wind loading, and shipping test profiles.
• Thermal-mechanical design of sealed, passively cooled enclosures containing high-power-density electronics.
• Experience with radome design or mechanical design constrained by RF transparency and antenna performance.
• Experience designing mounting and installation systems for field deployment by non-specialist installers.
• High-volume consumer, automotive, or telecom hardware experience, with a record of taking cost out of a design across generations.
• Experience working with overseas contract manufacturers and tooling suppliers.
• Familiarity with product safety and regulatory requirements for commercial electronic equipment (IEC 62368-1, CE marking, RoHS, WEEE, or equivalent).
• Experience with human factors, packaging design, or out-of-box experience for physical products.
• Experience standing up engineering processes, standards, or supplier relationships on a new product program.

Base Pay Range for:

Other site ranges may differ

Culture Statement

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Background Check

• Required for all positions: Blue's Standard Background Check
• Required for Certain Job Profiles: Defense Biometric Identification System (DBIDS) background check if at any time the role requires one to be on a military installation
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Benefits

• Benefits include: Medical, dental, vision, basic and supplemental life insurance, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability, 401(k) with a company match of up to 5%, and an Education Support Program.
• Stock Options for all regular employees (working at least 20 hours/week)
• Paid Time Off: Up to four (4) weeks per year based on weekly scheduled hours, and up to 14 company-paid holidays.
• Dependent on role type and job level, employees may be eligible for benefits and bonuses based on the company's intent to reward individual contributions and enable them to share in the company's results, or other factors at the company's sole discretion. Bonus amounts and eligibility are not guaranteed and subject to change and cancellation. Please check with your recruiter for more details.

Equal Employment Opportunity

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