Senior R&D Software Engineer (AI/DevOps)

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 Advanced Concepts and Enterprise Engineering (ACE), supporting Blue Origin’s mission of millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth. The team fosters innovation and drives engineering workflows of the future, shared solutions and standards, simplicity and lower costs, and manufacturable design.

Our team, Product Formulation, is a fast-moving, innovative group developing next-generation aerospace products, laying the groundwork for future aerospace capabilities. Our team is a prototype-first, fail-fast environment with focus on results over processes.

We are looking for someone to apply their technical expertise, leadership skills, and commitment to quality to positively impact safe human spaceflight. Passion for our mission and vision is required!

Responsibilities:

As a Senior R&D Software Engineer, you will be a technical leader building high-impact software prototypes for AI-driven applications in aerospace. You will be part of a multi-disciplinary product team providing software expertise to complement others in early product development and be responsible for establishing robust DevOps processes that accelerate experimentation. You’ll bring both top-tier software engineering skills and a passion for building in a rapid, R&D-style environment.

• Architect and implement robust, flexible software prototypes for AI, simulation, and data-driven aerospace solutions.
• Establish and maintain modern DevOps pipelines (CI/CD), cloud-native tools, and development environments to support rapid iteration.
• Build and optimize infrastructure for deploying ML models and supporting experimentation workflows (on-premise and in cloud environments like AWS).
• Act as a bridge between research and engineering, helping to mature and scale promising prototypes.
• Drive adoption of containerization, orchestration, and infrastructure-as-code (preferably using Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, etc).
• Collaborate closely with multidisciplinary teams on ideas from concept through proof-of-concept and initial demonstration.
• Champion software quality, automation, and best practices in configuration management.
• Experience working in teams with diverse skills to rapidly ideate and bring forward novel products enabled by software and AI.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline
• 7+ years professional experience in software engineering (with at least 3 years in a senior or technical lead role).
• Demonstrated experience building complex software prototypes or R&D projects, including in AI/ML or simulation domains.
• Deep DevOps expertise (Gitlab/Jenkins, containerization, Kubernetes/Openshift, cloud CI/CD).
• Experience ingesting and manipulating data from a wide variety of sources including APIs, SQL/NoSQL databases, files, etc.
• Significant experience as a full-stack developer
• Advanced proficiency in Python, C++, or similar languages.
• Strong Linux system administration skills.
• Excellent communication skills.
• Strong mentorship or people leadership experience.
• 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 degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline
• Experience with AWS, GCP, or Azure, particularly with DevOps and cloud-native services.
• Familiarity with ML/AI frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch, MLflow, etc.).
• Knowledge of security best-practices (DevSecOps).
• Experience with SQL & Databricks or equivalent data warehouse solution
• Aerospace/systems engineering experience and/or experience developing software in an aerospace environment
• Experience developing applications in NVIDIA Omniverse and/or with OpenUSD frameworks
• Experience writing Python code for simulations or scientific computing tasks
• Experience with GraphQL endpoints
• Experience with data-manipulation, plotting, and simulation libraries, such as Pandas, NumPy, Matplotlib, SciKitLearn, SimPy, Salabim, etc.
• Experience with p