Director, Design Quality

Application close date:

Applications will be accepted on an ongoing basis until the requisition is closed.

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!  

This role is part of Blue Origin Operations, which is comprised of Integrated Supply Chain, Test Operations, Safety, Quality, and Mission Assurance. This includes Manufacturing and Supply Chain support across all Blue Origin facilities.

Director of Design Quality is a hands-on hardware quality leader who believes that quality must be designed in, not inspected out. You will build and lead the Design Quality function from the ground up, embedding quality rigor into every phase of the product development lifecycle from concept through mass production. At the heart of this role is ownership of the maturity gate framework, the mechanism that defines what "ready" looks like at every phase transition and serves as the independent check that ensures our hardware programs meet the standards required before moving forward. You will set cross-program quality standards, own the supplier quality function, and serve as the enterprise authority on design quality governance across all connectivity and communications hardware programs.

The Challenge

The TeraWave architecture consists of 5,408 optically interconnected satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) and medium Earth orbit (MEO). This multi-orbit design enables ultra-high-throughput links between global hubs and distributed, multigigabit user connections, particularly in remote, rural, and suburban areas where fiber paths are costly, technically infeasible, or slow to deploy. TeraWave enterprise-grade user and gateway terminals can be rapidly deployed worldwide and interface with existing high-capacity infrastructure, providing additional route and strengthening overall network resilience.

TeraWave addresses the unmet needs of customers who are seeking higher throughput, symmetrical upload/download speeds, more redundancy, and rapid scalability. Globally distributed customers can each access speeds of up to 144 Gbps delivered using Q/V-band links from a constellation of 5,280 LEO satellites, while up to 6 Tbps can be accessed via optical links from 128 MEO satellites. Delivering this network on time and at scale requires quality to be built into every phase of development, and that is where you come in.

What You'll Do

Own the Design Quality Strategy

• Define and own the design and manufacturing quality strategy across all new product introduction and volume production phases, aligned with program milestones and hardware maturity gates
• Serve as the quality authority across the full product development lifecycle, from early concept and alignment phases through development, build validation, production ramp, and mass production
• Drive a quality philosophy where quality is designed in at every phase rather than inspected out at the end, ensuring that design escapes, nonconformances, scrap, and rework are systematically driven down over time
• Advise senior leadership on quality risk posture and program readiness across all active programs

Own and Enforce the Maturity Gate Framework

• Establish and own the maturity gate framework that defines exactly what "ready" looks like at every phase transition, specifying required maturity levels and readiness criteria tied to specific program milestones
• Serve as the independent readiness check prior to every phase advancement, reviewing and validating that every function has met its requirements before a program moves forward
• Establish cross-program quality governance standards and maturity gate criteria spanning design gates (PDR, CDR, TRR) and manufacturing gates (PRR, Production Readiness, Rate Readiness)
• Ensure readiness checks span the full scope of requirements, including customer requirements, internal requirements, and regulatory compliance, with no gaps

Lead Design Quality Engineering

• Lead design quality engineering engagement across the full product development lifecycle, owning qualification and acceptance test criteria, FAI/AS9102 processes, configuration management oversight, and engineering change control
• Maintain the as-designed versus as-built baseline across all active programs, ensuring configuration integrity as hardware matures from development into production
• Work directly with engineering teams during early NPI phases when engineering engagement is at its p