Principal Software Engineer, Compute Architect, Orbital Data Centers

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 Advanced Concepts and Enterprise Engineering (ACE), supporting Blue Origin’s mission of millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth. The team fosters innovation and drives engineering workflows of the future, shared solutions and standards, simplicity and lower costs, and manufacturable design.

Join Blue Origin as we build infrastructure in space for the benefit of Earth. We’re developing a satellite constellation of orbital data centers, Sunrise, designed to transform how compute infrastructure is deployed and leveraged. As a Principal Software Engineer for Compute, you will be the chief architect and hands‑on developer of the "operating system" for our space‑based data centers. This is a senior, individual contributor role where you will operate with a high degree of autonomy to solve one of our most critical challenges: making a distributed fleet of computers in orbit function as a single, cohesive, and programmable platform.

Your primary focus will be to define the spacecraft software stack to process AI jobs are received including, but not limited to planning, scheduling, management, storage, start‑up/shut down, and handoffs. This will enable the craft to be best‑in‑class. You will have to be comfortable enabling high efficiency for multi‑tenant workloads while being constrained on power, thermal, and connectivity.

• 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 handles 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.

• 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 (e.g., Kubernetes, Mesos, Nomad) and containerization (e.g., 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.

• Experience building custom schedulers,…