Principal Software Engineer – Data & AI

blueorigin; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 231,000 - 323,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision

401(k) with company match

Parental leave

PTO and holidays

Stock options

Job summary

Blue Origin is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to set the technical direction for its enterprise knowledge and agentic AI platform. You will own the lakehouse, knowledge graph, retrieval systems, and NLP interfaces used by engineering, manufacturing, and mission teams.

As a hands-on senior IC, you will write production code, build reference implementations, and mentor engineers while driving reusable APIs, CI/CD, and observability.

Qualifications

• 10+ years building production software.
• 7+ years cross-team architecture ownership.
• Delivered production LLM, RAG, or agentic AI systems end to end.
• Experience with lakehouse architectures and AWS IaC.

Responsibilities

• Own architecture and roadmap for Blue Origin's agentic AI platform.
• Stay hands-on across the full stack—write production code and build reference implementations.
• Design shared capabilities exposed via APIs and MCPs.
• Set architecture direction across the platform portfolio with reusable patterns and CI/CD.
• Mentor senior/mid-level engineers and set standards such as ADRs.
• Establish AI evaluation and observability: regression suites, latency, and cost metrics.
• Ensure AI output is provenance-grounded with traceability and access controls.

Skills

Production software

Architectural leadership

LLM/agentic AI

Python development

AWS with IaC

Education

Graduate degree in AI or related field

Tools

Spark

Delta Lake

Neo4j

OpenSearch

Terraform

CDK

Job description

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!

1. Role Summary

We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to set the technical direction for how Blue Origin finds, reasons over, and acts on its enterprise knowledge. As a senior individual contributor, you'‑ll own the architecture of our agentic AI platform - the lakehouse, knowledge graph, retrieval systems, and natural-language interfaces that help engineering, manufacturing, and mission teams find critical data in seconds, not days.

You'‑ll lead through technical credibility, not reporting authority - staying hands‑on, writing production code, and proving out the hard parts yourself. Your impact is enterprise‑wide. Your work reaches engineers designing engines, technicians building vehicles, quality teams investigating anomalies, and mission teams in flight, and is increasingly reused by other products through shared APIs and MCPs.

2. Responsibilities

• Own the architecture and roadmap for Blue Origin's agentic AI, retrieval, and semantic reasoning platform.
• Stay hands‑on across the full stack‑write production code, build reference implementations, and prove out the hard parts yourself rather than delegating and reviewing.
• Design shared capabilities for reuse -exposed through documented APIs and MCPs -so other teams and products adopt them instead of rebuilding data and AI foundations.
• Set architecture direction across the platform portfolio (ingestion, knowledge graph, enterprise search, natural‑language‑to‑SQL, multi‑modal evidence), establishing reusable patterns and CI/CD, IaC, and release standards.
• Mentor senior/ mid‑level engineers and steward the standards, ADRs, and reference implementations that raise the whole team's bar.
• Establish AI evaluation and observability as engineering disciplines: regression suites, accuracy thresholds, and release gates, plus tracing and metrics (latency, cost, hallucination rate, relevance) on every production surface.
• Make AI output defensible -set the standard that answers trace to source‑grounded evidence with provenance, access control, and confidence, and drive retrieval and generation quality through offline and online evaluation.

3. Must‑Haves

• 10+ years building production software, with 7+ years of cross‑team architecture ownership or technical leadership.
• Delivered production LLM, RAG, or agentic AI systems end to end - ingestion, retrieval, reranking, prompt and context design, serving.
• Built and operated an enterprise data platform - a lakehouse or distributed architecture (Spark, Delta Lake, or equivalent), with a metadata‑driven ingestion framework - including schema evolution, pipeline reliability, and workload cost.
• Full‑stack depth: production Python, REST/GraphQL API design, and AWS with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform or CDK) and mature CI/CD.
• Passion for Blue Origin’s mission and ability to work in a fast‑paced, dynamic environment.

4. Preferred

• Lakehouse platforms (Databricks, Spark, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog)
• Knowledge graphs (Neo4j, Neptune)
• Enterprise search (Sinequa, OpenSearch)
• Natural‑language‑to‑SQL
• AI observability, inference cost and latency optimization
• Multi‑modal AI over documents, imagery, or telemetry
• Graduate degree or published open‑source work in applied AI

Base Pay Range for: WA applicants is $230,773.00 - $323,081.85

Other site ranges may differ

Culture Statement

Don’t meet all desired requirements? Studies have shown that some people are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single desired qualification. At Blue Origin, we are dedicated to building an authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every desired qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

Export Control Regulations

Applicants for employment at Blue Origin must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (i.e. current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum.

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
• Required for Certain Job Profiles: Drivers who operate Commercial Motor Vehicles with a Gross Vehicle Weight (GVW), Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR) or combination of power unit and trailer that meets or exceeds 10,001 lbs. and/or transports placardable amounts of hazardous materials by ground in any vehicle on a public road while in commerce, may be subject to additional Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations including: Driver Qualification Files, Medical Certification (obtained before onboarding), Road Test, Hours of Service, Drug and Alcohol Testing, vehicle inspection requirements, CDL requirements (if applicable) and hazardous materials transportation/shipping training.
• Required for certain Job Profiles: Ability to obtain and maintain Merchant Mariner Credential, which includes pre‑employment and random drug testing as well as DOT physical

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

Blue Origin is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and is committed to attracting, retaining, and developing a highly qualified and dedicated work force. Blue Origin hires and promotes people on the basis of their qualifications, performance, and abilities. We support the establishment and maintenance of a workplace that fosters trust, equality, and teamwork. We provide all qualified applicants for employment and employees with equal opportunities for hire, promotion, and other terms and conditions of employment, regardless of their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin/ethnicity, age, physical or mental disability, genetic factors, military/veteran status, or any other status or characteristic protected by federal, state, and/or local law. Blue Origin will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws, including the Washington Fair Chance Act, the California Fair Chance Act, the Los Angeles Fair Chance in Hiring Ordinance, and other applicable laws. For more information on “Know Your Rights,” please see here.

Affirmative Action and Disability Accommodation

Applicants wishing to receive information on Blue Origin’s Affirmitive Action Plans, or applicants requiring a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in the application and/or interview process, please contact us at [e-mail]. Please note this is a publicly managed inbox. Please do not include any personal medical information in your request.