Software Engineer III - Core Platform Infrastructure

Blue Origin; Washington; On-site; USD 165,000 - 231,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision, lifeinsurance

Stock options

Paid time off

Education support program

Job summary

Blue Origin LLC is seeking a Software Engineer III for Platform Infrastructure to own the Kubernetes clusters that power internal services. You will build reusable, safe templates and guardrails, and drive self-service tooling across engineering teams to accelerate delivery and reliability.

You will operate in a high-impact environment with a strong focus on automation, security, and observability, using Terraform, Flux, and GitLab pipelines to enable scalable deployments at scale.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience operating and administering Kubernetes clusters in production.
• Experience with GitOps-based delivery and policy-as-code enforcement.
• Ability to build reusable infrastructure as a product with versioned templates.

Responsibilities

• Own and operate Kubernetes clusters and paved-road templates (Kustomize bases/overlays, pipelines, Terraform modules).
• Configure, deploy, scale, and administer cluster software.
• Maintain reliability and on-call readiness with observability and incident response.

Skills

Go

Java

JavaScript

Python

Linux

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

Kustomize

Terraform

Flux

GitLab

Datadog

Claude Code

Codex

Job description

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 Enterprise Technology (ET), where we’re developing the digital infrastructure needed to build the road to space, with an emphasis on digital capabilities required to advance Blue Origin’s mission.

About the Role

We're a diverse team of collaborators, doers, and problem‑solvers relentlessly committed to a culture of safety and innovation. This position will directly impact the history of space exploration and requires your dedication and keen attention to ensure safe and repeatable spaceflight. Join us in lowering the cost of access to space, fulfilling Blue Origin's vision of millions living and working in space to benefit Earth. This is a platform infrastructure role — you'll build and operate the thing that builds the thing. We are looking for a skilled and motivated Software Engineer III to join our Platform Infrastructure team. We own and operate the Kubernetes clusters that the rest of the company deploys onto, and we build the paved road that gets teams there — reusable Kustomize configurations, GitLab CI/CD pipeline templates, and Terraform modules that other teams adopt to build, ship, and run their own services. We don't own those services; we own the cluster underneath them and the templates and guardrails that make deploying to it fast, consistent, and safe. You'll join a high‑impact team whose customers are other engineering teams across Blue Origin — the leverage is enormous, because every improvement to a template or cluster capability multiplies across everyone who builds on it.

At Blue Origin we rely heavily on Kubernetes for rapid software development and deployment; a candidate for this role needs deep, hands‑on experience running Kubernetes clusters in production — operating the platform itself, not just deploying onto it. If you're passionate about building resilient, self‑service infrastructure and paved‑road tooling — and want your work to matter — this is your team.

How We Build

We build with an AI‑assisted mindset — using tools like Claude Code, Codex, and other leading AI assistants to move faster, think bigger, and tackle harder problems. AI is a first‑class part of how we design, automate, debug, and review here — not an afterthought. You'll be expected to adopt, evaluate, and advocate for AI tooling responsibly, with a clear eye on production reliability, security, and governance. The best engineers on our team don't just use AI — they know when to trust it, when to question it, and when to override it.

Platform Scale & Impact

The clusters we operate and the templates we publish underpin how software is built, shipped, and run across engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, and mission operations. When we improve a pipeline template or a cluster capability, that improvement lands for every team that builds on it. We’re continuously raising the bar on the paved road: reusable delivery pipelines, resilient container platforms, and observability that teams inherit by default. At this scale, reliability and scalability aren’t aspirational — they’re the baseline. The infrastructure you help build directly determines how fast Blue Origin moves.

What You’ll Work With

• Languages: Go, Java, JavaScript, and Python
• Cloud: AWS and cloud‑native services
• Containers & Orchestration: Kubernetes, containerd, Docker, Kustomize
• Infrastructure as Code & GitOps: Terraform modules, Flux
• Policy & Cluster Security: Kyverno policy‑as‑code, RBAC, network policy
• CI/CD: GitLab pipeline templates and delivery automation
• Observability: Datadog — metrics, centralized logging, distributed tracing, dashboards, alerting
• Networking: Kubernetes networking (CNI, ingress, DNS); AWS VPC fundamentals
• Operating Systems: Linux
• AI Tools: Claude Code, Codex, and equivalent AI‑assisted development tools
• Source Control & Collaboration: Git, code reviews, design reviews

Key Responsibilities

• Cluster & Paved‑Road Engineering: Own and operate the Kubernetes clusters that teams across the company deploy onto — capacity, upgrades, security, and multi‑tenancy. Design, build, and maintain the reusable templates that make up the paved road: Kustomize bases and overlays, GitLab CI/CD pipeline templates, and Terraform modules, delivered and continuously reconciled through GitOps (Flux), that other teams adopt to deploy and operate their own services. Enforce cluster guardrails as policy‑as‑code (Kyverno) — multi‑tenancy boundaries, security baselines, and safe defaults that consuming teams inherit automatically. Treat these templates as a product — version them, document them, gather feedback from the teams that consume them, and evolve them with backward compatibility in mind.
• Configure, deploy, scale, and administer the open source and commercial software that powers the cluster and the paved road.
• Reliability & Operations: Own the reliability of the cluster and the shared tooling across their lifecycle — from design through operation and refinement. Maintain and improve cluster health by monitoring availability, capacity, and system‑health signals, and acting on what the data shows. Participate in sustainable on‑call and incident response for cluster‑ and platform‑level incidents, conduct root cause analysis, and help lead blameless postmortems that turn incidents into lasting fixes. Establish and uphold observability best practices — and make them easy for consuming teams to inherit by default through the templates you provide.
• Automation & Developer Experience: Drive the sustainable scaling of the platform through automation, relentlessly reducing toil for both our team and the teams we serve. Build self‑service capabilities and paved‑road defaults that let other teams deploy quickly and safely without hand‑holding or manual intervention.
• Engineering Excellence: Write well‑tested, maintainable code and champion quality through code reviews, automated testing, and CI/CD best practices. Identify and resolve complex issues across the stack — from cluster and platform behavior to pipeline configuration and network paths. Contribute to team standards, runbooks, and documentation that raise the technical bar across the team.
• Collaboration & Growth: Partner closely with Senior and Principal Engineers to deliver on the team's ambitious roadmap. Work cross‑functionally with product managers, the teams that build on our platform, and engineers across the company to translate needs into reliable platform capabilities. Actively participate in design reviews, sprint ceremonies, and technical discussions — your voice and perspective matter here. Raise the bar in code and design reviews, and share your knowledge and skills to strengthen the team — while learning from the engineers around you.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional experience across software development, infrastructure engineering, and production operations.
• Hands‑on experience operating and administering Kubernetes clusters in production — not merely deploying workloads onto them — including cluster lifecycle and upgrades, node and control‑plane management, RBAC and multi‑tenancy, cluster networking (CNI, ingress, DNS, network policy), add‑ons and controllers, and resource/quota management.
• Experience with GitOps‑based delivery (e.g., Flux or Argo CD) and policy‑as‑code enforcement (e.g., Kyverno or OPA/Gatekeeper).
• Experience authoring reusable infrastructure as a product — Terraform modules, Kustomize configurations, and CI/CD pipeline templates that other teams consume — with versioning and backward compatibility in mind.
• Hands‑on experience with AWS and cloud‑native infrastructure, including core networking (VPC, subnets, security groups).
• Experience analyzing and troubleshooting distributed systems.
• Experience running production systems on‑call — incident response, blameless postmortems, and observability (metrics, logging, and distributed tracing).
• Strong proficiency in at least one general‑purpose language (e.g., Go, Python, Java, JavaScript, C, C++, or .NET), and openness to learning the languages we use day to day (Go, Java, JavaScript, and Python).
• Familiarity with, or willingness to adopt, AI‑assisted development tools — with sound judgment about when to trust, question, or override what they produce.
• Strong communication skills — you can articulate complex technical concepts clearly, engage constructively in design discussions, and own outcomes.
• Ability to earn trust, maintain positive and professional relationships, and contribute to a culture of inclusion.
• 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.

Desired Qualifications

• Multi‑cluster, or multi‑account / multi‑environment, operations at scale.
• Experience with a service mesh such as Istio — traffic management, mTLS, and observability at the mesh layer.
• A demonstrated habit of using AI‑assisted tools in your workflow, and judgment evaluating AI‑generated code and configuration for correctness, security, and production readiness.
• A habit of sharing knowledge through code reviews, design discussions, and pairing.
• Experience in aerospace, manufacturing, or supply chain domains is a plus but not required.

What Success Looks Like

In your first 3‑6 months, you will:

• Ramp up on our clusters and paved‑road tooling — shipping a reviewed template or module change and taking primary on‑call with support.
• Independently deliver meaningful automation and reliability improvements with measurable impact on velocity or uptime.
• Participate in on‑call rotations and demonstrate reliability ownership.
• Contribute constructively to design and code reviews across the team.

In your first 6‑12 months, you will:

• Own one or more areas of the cluster or the template suite end‑to‑end — from design decisions through production operation and the experience of the teams who consume it.
• Drive improvements in reliability, scalability, or developer experience that benefit teams across the company.
• Establish yourself as a trusted technical voice in team discussions and cross‑functional collaborations.
• Share your knowledge back with the team — through reviews, documentation, and engineering standards — while continuing to grow.

Why Join Platform Infrastructure

This is an opportunity to: Work at the foundation of Blue Origin's digital capability — the infrastructure you build and operate powers software delivery for the entire company. Operate at meaningful scale — our platforms support engineering, manufacturing, and operations teams across Blue Origin's programs. Make toil disappear — replace manual, brittle processes with self‑service, automated systems that let teams across the company move faster. Grow in a high‑craft engineering culture that values operational excellence, automation, and continuous improvement. Make a lasting impact — both on Blue Origin's mission and on your own career trajectory in platform, infrastructure, and reliability engineering. If you're a platform‑minded engineer who cares deeply about reliability, automation, and building infrastructure that others depend on — we want to hear from you.

Base Pay Range

Base Pay Range for: WA applicants is $164,652.00 - $230,512.80. 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

• 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 Affidative 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. We’re committed to building the road to space so our children can build the future. We are a mission‑driven company focused on ideas and innovation, and encourage fresh perspectives from bold voices. At Blue, our team is building the future as their unique selves.

Thank you for your interest in working at Blue Origin! Blue Origin was founded with a vision to enable a future where millions of people are living and working in space to benefit Earth. In order to preserve Earth, Blue Origin believes in the need to enable humanity to expand, explore, find new energy and material resources, and move industries that stress Earth into space. Blue Origin believes it has an important role in building a road to space and lowering the cost of getting there. At Blue Origin, we’re working on this today by developing fully reusable launch vehicles and systems that are safe, reliable and affordable. Every launch vehicle is designed for human spaceflight from the beginning and able to ferry payloads to space.

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