Sr. Electromechanical Packaging Engineer - Electro-Optical Components

Build the Hardware That Survives Space

Space is unforgiving: extreme temperatures, violent vibration and shock, radiation, and vacuum. The electronics and photonics flying on Blue Origin spacecraft have to survive all of it. You'll own ruggedized enclosures, electro-optical assemblies, and fiber-optic integration from concept through flight release.

This role supports classified programs. You must be eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance.

The Mission

Blue Origin is building optical communications as a core capability for high-rate space networking. The hardware that makes it work must hold tight thermal stability and precise optical interfaces while surviving launch and years on orbit. That's fundamentally a mechanical and thermal problem, and it's the one this team solves.

You'll own the mechanical design of the electro-optical units at the center of that system: modem processing and photonics units, electro-optic assemblies, transceiver hardware, and optical amplifier assemblies, plus the chassis and stacked-unit architectures that house them. The thermal paths that keep lasers, modulators, and receivers stable enough to close a link are yours, along with the fiber optic tray and every fiber run, splice, and junction inside the box. You'll work closely with electrical engineers and PCB designers throughout, because on hardware this dense, mechanical, thermal, and electrical design converge or fail together.

As the senior technical voice for electro-optical packaging, you'll set the design standards, analysis methods, and process baselines the team builds on.

What You'll Do

• Own complex packaging assemblies including enclosures, chassis, card-cage and stacked-unit architectures, mounting systems, and fiber junction housings, across the full lifecycle from requirements through production support.
• Lead the mechanical and thermal design of modem processing and photonics units, integrating high-speed digital boards, photonics boards, electro-optic daughter cards, and power conversion into flight-qualifiable, mass- and volume-efficient packages.
• Own the mechanical thermal design with thermal engineering: heat rejection paths, mounting materials, heater placement, thermal isolation, and thermal control of tunable lasers, modulators, and TEC-cooled devices.
• Own fiber optic tray design and all internal fiber management: layout, routing, bend-radius control, strain relief, splice retention, and connector selection. Define the splicing and workmanship processes and specify the equipment to execute them.
• Collaborate with electrical engineers and PCB designers from architecture through layout, fabrication, and test. Converge board outline, component floor planning, heat-source placement, and connector location. Define board-level protection: staking, conformal coating, bonding, and component restraint for vibration and shock.
• Drive thermal, structural, vibration, shock, and fatigue analyses. Own tolerance stack-ups and thermo-elastic stability budgets that protect optical interfaces and coupling efficiency across environments.
• Own the mechanical, thermal, environmental, EMC, mass, and envelope requirement set. Decompose host requirements into verifiable requirements, maintain traceability, and report mass properties against host allocations.
• Deliver models, drawings, specifications, and release packages, including mechanical and thermal ICDs. Apply GD&T per ASME Y14.5. Address space-optics risks such as contamination control, outgassing, hermeticity, and radiation-induced fiber attenuation.
• Design for production. Apply DFM/DFA, specify fiber and optical assembly processes, and partner with suppliers on producibility. Own test and integration support, including fixtures and optical loopback setups.
• Mentor engineers, lead design reviews, and build team capability in electro-optical packaging.

What You Bring

• B.S. in Mechanical, Aerospace, Optical, or Photonics Engineering, or a related discipline, plus 5-10+ years designing electromechanical or electro-optical assemblies, electronics or photonics packaging, or comparable high-reliability hardware, with a track record of owning designs from requirements through production.
• Hands-on experience packaging electro-optical hardware including coherent or high-speed optical modems, transceivers, optical amplifier assemblies, photonic devices, lasers or detectors, or fiber-optic assemblies, including the thermal, optical-interface, and contamination challenges that come with it.
• Demonstrated experience designing fiber management inside a constrained enclosure: tray layout, routing, bend-radius and strain-relief strategy, splice retention, and connector selection, plus thermal management of temperature-sensitive photonics, including TEC integration and thermal isolation.
• Experience integrating PCBAs, connectors, and cable or fiber interfaces into mechanical assemblies, with a history of close collaboration with electrical engineers and PCB designers on dense, high-reliability boards.
• Knowledge of ruggedized electronics and photonics design: thermal management, structural protection, vibration and shock survival, vacuum compatibility, and EMI/EMC shielding, plus experience conducting or directing the supporting analyses.
• Ability to define and hold mechanical and thermal interfaces in both directions: specifying what your hardware requires from the host vehicle, and negotiating with the engineers who own adjacent optical, structural, and payload hardware.
• Strong 3D CAD skills (Creo/Pro-E a plus) and solid command of GD&T, tolerance stack-ups, and ASME Y14.5 drawing practice.
• Eligibility to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance.
• Comfort in a fast-moving program with evolving requirements and open trades: the judgment to make defensible decisions before every input is final, and the communication skills to make technical risk clear.

Bonus Points For

• An active U.S. government security clearance, and/or an M.S. in a relevant discipline.
• Experience with optical communications hardware (coherent or IM-DD transceivers, silicon photonics, optical modems, optical amplifiers, or pluggable form factors), and experience building modems, transceivers, or optical terminal electronics to standards such as SIS-002, OpenZR+, SDA optical communications terminal standards, or CCSDS optical standards.
• Working knowledge of laser communications terminal architecture and coherent link building blocks, such as integrated coherent receivers, modulators, tunable sources, and amplifiers.
• Experience developing hosted payloads or line-replaceable units against a spacecraft bus interface specification, and familiarity with spacecraft environmental specifications and qualification tailoring, such as NASA GEVS and SMC-S-016.
• Experience maturing prototypes into producible, qualifiable flight products, including reconstructing design documentation for hardware you didn't originally design.
• Fiber-optic depth: splicing, connector and termini selection (MIL-PRF-29504, ARINC 801), cleaning and inspection practice (IPC-8497-1), link loss budgeting, and familiarity with IPC-A-620 and J-STD-001, plus experience with photonic and semiconductor assembly processes such as die attach, wire bond, flip chip, hermetic sealing, and fiber alignment.
• Analysis depth in electronics thermal, structural, vibration, shock, or fatigue work, including solder-fatigue methods such as Steinberg or Engelmaier and FEA/thermal simulation in ANSYS or FloTHERM, plus hands-on familiarity with ECAD tools such as Altium or Mentor xPedition and PLM tools such as Windchill.
• Familiarity with qualification and reliability standards such as T