Radiation Engineer – Spacecraft & Payloads (RHA)

Blue Origin; Cupertino (CA); On-site; USD 157,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation provided

Travel: Up to 15%

Job summary

Blue Origin in Cupertino, CA seeks a dedicated Radiation Engineer to own the end-to-end radiation hardness assurance for the TeraWave program. You will define environments, margins, and requirements, guiding mitigation and documenting evidence to accept radiation risk.

You will evaluate EEE parts, perform shielding analyses, and coordinate with electrical, RF, and avionics teams. Relocation is provided; travel up to 15% may be required.

Qualifications

• B.S. in electrical engineering, nuclear engineering, physics, aerospace engineering, materials science, or a related technical discipline.
• 5+ years of experience in spacecraft radiation effects, RHA, radiation test, electronic-device physics, or a closely related field.
• Demonstrated knowledge of TID and SEE mechanisms, radiation environment modeling, shielding, and electronic design mitigation.
• Experience interpreting radiation test data and determining whether data are applicable to a specific part, lot, operating condition, circuit, and mission.
• Ability to derive and communicate radiation requirements, margins, assumptions, uncertainty, and residual risk across multiple engineering disciplines.
• Ability to plan and execute technical work with external radiation test facilities and part suppliers.
• 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.

Responsibilities

• Develop, maintain, and execute the TeraWave RHA Plan for LEO and MEO spacecraft, payloads, avionics, EPS, propulsion electronics, sensors, optical devices, and solar-array technologies.
• Define and control external and internal radiation environments over the applicable mission lifetime, including trapped particles, solar particle events, galactic cosmic rays, total ionizing dose (TID), displacement damage dose (DDD/TNID), and single-event effects (SEE).
• Translate mission orbit, duration, confidence level, shielding, duty cycle, and availability needs into system, subsystem, unit, circuit, and EEE-part radiation requirements.
• Establish and maintain radiation design margin policy, including risk/criticality-based margin tiers and documented rationale for confidence, uncertainty, and lot-to-lot variability.
• Perform or direct shielding, dose-depth, sectoring/ray-trace, and part-location analyses; work with configuration and mechanical teams to maintain an analyzable spacecraft geometry.
• Evaluate EEE parts and optoelectronics for destructive and non-destructive SEE, TID, enhanced low-dose-rate sensitivity, DDD, and application-specific failure thresholds.
• Calculate mission SEE rates and translate device events into circuit, box, subsystem, and system effects such as reset rate, data loss, outage, degraded throughput, latent damage, or destructive failure.
• Partner with EEE Parts Engineering to screen BOMs, assess applicability of heritage and vendor data, disposition radiation risk, and define lot-specific testing or procurement controls.
• Partner with electrical, RF, optical, and avionics hardware designers on radiation mitigation, including part substitution, shielding, current limiting, latch-up protection, filtering, redundancy, circuit-level protection, and operating constraints.
• Support solar-array degradation predictions and end-of-life power assurance with the Solar and EPS teams, maintaining traceability among radiation confidence level, degradation factors, and the authoritative power budget.
• Maintain the radiation risk register, part-by-part evidence status, waivers/deviations, open tests, and residual risk; support design reviews and flight-readiness decisions.
• Monitor emerging radiation-effects data and provide rapid application-specific guidance for new technologies, commercial parts, FPGAs/processors, memories, power semiconductors, RFICs, and photonics.

Skills

Radiation effects

RHA

TID/SEE

Radiation testing

Education

B.S. in electrical/nuclear/physics/aerospace engineering

5+ years radiation experience

Job description

Blue Origin in Cupertino, CA seeks a dedicated Radiation Engineer to own the end-to-end radiation hardness assurance for the TeraWave program. You will define environments, margins, and requirements, guiding mitigation and documenting evidence to accept radiation risk.

You will evaluate EEE parts, perform shielding analyses, and coordinate with electrical, RF, and avionics teams. Relocation is provided; travel up to 15% may be required.