propulsion engineer

senior system engineer

engineer

software engineer

manufacturing engineer

Blue Origin

My time at Blue Origin has been a unique and rewarding experience, but it has not come without its challenges. On the positive side, the company offers excellent pay, comprehensive benefits, and generous paid time off. The work itself is incredibly exciting; building rocket engines is undoubtedly the coolest job I could have ever imagined. Since joining, I have learned a lot and significantly improved my skills, thanks to the steep but rewarding learning curve. The shop is clean and comfortable, making for a pleasant working environment.

However, there are some areas that need improvement. Management often seems out of touch with the realities of large-scale manufacturing and sometimes with manufacturing in general. This disconnect can be incredibly frustrating and hampers efficiency. There’s also a lot of red tape and procedural redundancy, with excessive bureaucracy slowing down production and hindering the goal of increasing manufacturing rates. Technicians are required to follow procedures written by inexperienced engineers, regardless of their practicality. Deviating from these procedures, even when they are ineffective, can lead to being labeled as negligent if something goes wrong. Additionally, input from technicians about process improvements often falls on deaf ears, despite the company's claim that “everyone at Blue has a voice.”

In the past year, the company has become more heavy-handed, showing a willingness to let people go over minor mistakes. We were also informed that Blue Origin would adopt a SpaceX-like practice of firing the bottom five percent of employees annually. This has created an atmosphere of uncertainty and pressure, which can be demoralizing.

Advancement opportunities also pose a challenge. Getting promoted or leveled up requires completing a justification form, and it often feels like promotions are based more on “networking” than on merit. The goalposts for advancement also seem to keep moving, making it difficult to progress.

In my time at Blue, there have been many unfulfilled promises from HR and management. It’s essential to get everything in writing, especially during the negotiation phase, as verbal assurances are not always reliable.

Overall, Blue Origin is a great place to work if you love the idea of building rocket engines and want good pay and benefits. However, be prepared to navigate a lot of red tape and management issues. The work environment is excellent, and despite the challenges, I am cautiously optimistic that things will improve over time. No place is perfect and without its own drama, but this is just my experience. If you decide to join, make sure to negotiate hard and get all promises in writing.

The people are nice, but their business processes suck! From the first day of my employment there I had (everyone has to) deal with the incompetency of the programming department. As a machinist you are expected to navigate and correct any issues you find. If something happens due to the programs, it’s your fault! Though they say there is a process in place to make changes, they very rarely use the process. Management will tell you what you want to hear, but will stab you in the back when they see fit. They say that they encourage development, but if you don’t do things perfectly, they begin keeping track, and rather than encouraging you and making you a better machinist, they penalize you by not adequately compensating you for the good that you do. Through my time spent there, there was multiple changes in management, but nothing changes.
Their business processes are a joke!!!! It doesn’t matter if there isn’t enough information to adequately do your job, they punish you regardless of their culpability.
They are hiring people at such a rate trying to mask the massive amount of turnovers they see. As an additional consequence, because of the mass amounts of people that they hire, they completely took away any opportunities for overtime. And knowing the state of the economy, they continue to try and expand. They are no where close to being able to produce to customer demand, and are continually trying to cover mistakes that they make as a company. So much so that they have in flight anomalies that happen on a fairly regular basis.
There are only two or three machinists that have been there longer than 10 years…everyone else hasn’t been there longer than about three years.
If you are looking for a place with job security, and a company that treats you as an individual and helps with your development, THIS IS NOT THE PLACE FOR YOU!!! They treat as a number and nothing more. They like to “do” things for the employees to make it look like they care, but in reality, there are much better places to work! They entice you with money and then literally use you as they wish! They care nothing about you as a person…you are 100% expendable!!
They talk a good game, but are no where near where they should be to even keep up technologically because their processes are so broken! It’s literally a joke!!

Every person I worked with on the production floor was fantastic. The skill, experience, and helpfulness of the Machinists and Technicians was top notch. Unfortunately, there was no trickle up effect. 

Despite being under a single roof, it was like working for 7 different companies. Each department was pitted against one another for budget with middle management spending most of their time trying to pass Non-Compliance Issues to others and attempting to acquire single purpose production solutions.
The idea of using inter-department root cause collaboration to solve NC issues and purchasing multi-purpose production solutions was low hanging fruit that management never reached for.
There appeared to be an insatiable desire for promotion within middle management that led to copious amounts of money being spent on new projects and production solutions. This led to many projects being left half finished because the initiator was advanced to a new role before they could implement a self-sustaining system.

Titles carry more weight than competency and accomplishment until the "Title" gets behind the 8-ball and needs pulled out of the frying pan.

Starting pay is at the top end for aerospace but if you're hourly, don't expect better than McDonald's style raises. Raises are based on Performance Reviews and even if an employee discovered cold fusion, they'd still be marked as "Met Expectations" so the department could save a Pumpkin Spice Frappuccino's worth of wages per week.

It is awesome to work alongside, collaborate with, and learn from brilliant tradesmen. It's incredible be use massive, state-of-the-art machines to fabricate spacefaring equipment. But you will be brought back to earth and not-so-subtly told to know your role, keep hitting your KPIs, and collect your paycheck.

Blue origin is an awesome place to work. It feels like your working for a greater good and making a difference in the world. The culture is good, benefits are good, pay is above average, and PTO is 4 weeks a year right off the bat.
Everyone gets a nice laptop and desk with two monitors. Free snacks, drinks, and good coffee. Lots of catered food for meetings.
Just like most places, you will be compensated based on your experience and what you bring to the table. People who have 1-5 years of experience will often complain about being compensated lower than someone with 10-20 years of experience.
Also your raise will depend on your performance. If you perform well and do not whine and complain then you could get $2-$6 per hour raise or 7%-14% of your salary depending.
And if you are under performing don’t expect much, $0.50-$1.00 per hour or 3%.
Too often I saw certain employees asking for more money constantly but gave no rational and did not show ambition
As the company grows larger yes some perks will go away, it’s a part of growing pains.
If you are a hard worker you will be rewarded.
Just like any company anywhere, there are good managers, bad managers and good employees and bad employees.
You can work as little or as much as you like. Work hours are flexible and you can take a day off planned or unexpected without feeling guilty.  Work life balance at Blue is excellent especially when compared with Space X or Boeing.

I copied this from a previous review because it is spot on! The only thing I’ll add is if they don’t fix things they are begging for a Union! 
 
This used to be the best place I had ever worked. You got to do your job the way you knew how to do it and management would leave you to it. It had a great work life balance with the schedule you agreed to at the time of hire. Now it is whatever management says the schedule will be at the time (5 12s) mandatory currently. You must follow a system that is broken by copy and paste and when you request changes to be made you are looked down upon as if you have no clue what you are doing and you are not allowed to go against the system in place which is very frustrating. The engineers here have it made this company caters to them yet few know what they are doing they outnumber the people actually making the parts 3 to 1 minimum and contribute very little. It is chaos almost everyday management is disconnected with the floor and what it takes to actually make hardware they expect certain timelines when tasks are given to you that are unrealistic because of this and get upset when its not done on time. If you are happy where you are at and just looking for a better opportunity I would consider looking elsewhere first don't let the pay entice you it is not worth it it is only going to get worse as time goes on and more chaotic and once you are in the door they will treat you like they own you.


A typical day at work: Find out about Jobs that are completed and what we have ongoing or coming up so we can allocate what people we have to the jobs they can do and then try to get done what we came in aware about as well as any jobs that come up during the shift. 
    
What you believe you learned: I have had the chance to learn new Inspection techniques and different types of inspections and expand my skill set.

Management: Loves their meetings, not usually on your side. Most of them have their favorite employees that they look out for and give the best raises or promotions to. If you don't go with their ideas you are targeted even if you try to bring up a better idea that may be more efficient.

Workplace culture: Has tons of potential with the different Business resource groups. However, they say they want a "competitive work environment" which from being here usually translates to backstabbing and throwing people under the bus to try and make yourself look better.
 
The hardest part of the job: The politics and micromanagement/bad managers, some days coming into work. 

The most enjoyable part of the job: Working with rockets and learning as much as I have had the chance to learn. Some of the people I work with are great people to work with as well.

This used to be the best place I had ever worked. You got to do your job the way you knew how to do it and management would leave you to it. It had a great work life balance with the schedule you agreed to at the time of hire. Now it is whatever management says the schedule will be at the time (5 12s) mandatory currently. You must follow a system that is broken by copy and paste and when you request changes to be made you are looked down upon as if you have no clue what you are doing and you are not allowed to go against the system in place which is very frustrating. The engineers here have it made this company caters to them yet few know what they are doing they outnumber the people actually making the parts 3 to 1 minimum and contribute very little. It is chaos almost everyday management is disconnected with the floor and what it takes to actually make hardware they expect certain timelines when tasks are given to you that are unrealistic because of this and get upset when its not done on time. If you are happy where you are at and just looking for a better opportunity I would consider looking elsewhere first don't let the pay entice you it is not worth it it is only going to get worse as time goes on and more chaotic and once you are in the door they will treat you like they own you.

At the ground level this is a great place to work. It's a very collaborative environment filled with exceptional talent. The pace is fairly fast for an Aerospace company, but not like it was a few years ago. Blue has about 1/10 of the people necessary for the advertised vision.  This leads to long hours for most people. The vision and work are inspirational. On a good day it's an exciting place.
That said, top level management is completely disconnected from the workforce. A number of issues (overcrowding, parking, lack of certain benefits, roll-back of certain perks, poor development prospects, long time employees being underpaid) have been compounding for some time. Management did not respond to the pandemic well (relative to other local companies). They are not being receptive to employee requests for greater flexibility. Now those lingering issues have coalesced into a major morale crisis. Many many respected employees have been leaving the company in droves. The ramifications are mainly felt by the mid-level positions. This is not a good place for mid-late career opportunities at the moment.

Your teammates are there because they want to "build a road to space". They are excited and passionate and willing to help each other out. The projects are cutting edge and can be very rewarding.

The challenge comes in the form of having a dozen or more "priorities"; all of which are #1 and seemingly due yesterday. The PowerPoint schedules to leadership have to show perfect, overly optimistic planning while reality is managed offline and in silos. Chaos and churn in what you are working on is the norm. Sacrifice and going above and beyond seems to be rarely recognized, and instead is just considered the norm, with anything else risking in negative feedback and consequences. Ultimately,  when the challenge dates aren't met, the solution seems to be reorgs and jobs cut instead of determining root cause and improving planning accuracy.

It's a shame because there is so much potential, but without leadership that can create unified direction, challenging (but realistic) schedules,  and a culture of recognition and trust, people are not going to bring their best as fear often seems to be the driver. If they stay, they will keep their head down and avoid risk, but often, the best will just quietly leave.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Blue Origin pays well based initial figures but once you end up working there you realize that they expect you to work whatever hours it takes to get the job done. Which mean you are really being paid less in long run because of the extra hours required from you on a weekly basis. It's also hard to ignore some the safety issues that you are encouraged to ignore. Conditions in the work settings have changed quite a bit in the 2 years, and not for the better. One would be hard pressed to see anyone smiling or happy while doing their job, which has become commonplace in the office setting.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Meeting unrealistic dates for the numerous project completion list to meet NASA's project goal that is already a year behind schedule.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
I would say mostly chaotic and stressful because of the push to meet the NASA project goal.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Busy with a host of tasks, paperwork', and meeting's. Everyone is being pushed to the limit.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Propulsion engineer 8 salaries reported	$133,516 per year
Senior system engineer 17 salaries reported	$144,984 per year
Engineer 13 salaries reported	$137,528 per year
Software engineer 34 salaries reported	$158,940 per year
Manufacturing engineer 4 salaries reported	$117,667 per year

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