Principal Software Architect, Space Compute Orchestration

BLUE ORIGIN

Huntsville (AL)

On-site

USD 220,000 - 323,000

Full time

14 days+

A complete application in a minute

Tailored resume and cover letter, ready to send.

Get past ATS filters

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision insurance

Life insurance

Paid parental leave

Disability insurance

401(k) with company match

Stock options

Paid time off

Job summary

Blue Origin in Huntsville is seeking a Senior Principal Software Engineer to be the chief architect and hands-on developer of our spacecraft compute stack for the Sunrise data-center fleet. You will lead the orchestration layer across distributed orbital nodes, enabling multi-tenant workloads with efficient power and thermal planning, high availability, and scalable APIs.

You will collaborate with hardware and software teams to deliver a performant, self‑describing platform capable of running AI

Qualifications

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a similar technical discipline.
10+ years of software engineering experience with a focus on distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, or large-scale backend services.
Deep expertise in building and operating distributed systems, with strong experience in cloud orchestration (Kubernetes, Mesos, Nomad) and containerization (Docker).
Proven experience designing and developing large-scale, high-availability software services and APIs.
Strong system-architecture capabilities, particularly in the context of cloud-native technologies.
Experience providing technical leadership for complex software projects.
Proven demonstration of reducing latency across a product.

Responsibilities

Definition, architecture, design, test, and validation of spacecraft compute software.
Architect and build the orchestration platform for managing containerized workloads across a distributed fleet of orbital compute nodes.
Design and implement advanced scheduling algorithms to optimize for power, thermal constraints, workload priority, and data locality.
Develop the control plane, APIs, and related software that enable multi-tenancy, resource allocation, and job submission for workloads.
Own the software-defined networking and storage strategies
Design for a highly-available system that rapidly handle failures, intermittent connectivity, and complex orchestration across spacecraft.
Lead the technical strategy for the entire orchestration stack, from the container runtime and OS-level primitives to the highest-level service layers.
Lead validation and testing campaigns while working on aggressive timelines for deployment.
Work closely with hardware and application teams to co-design a platform that is performant, operable, and meets customer needs.