Project Manager
Are you passionate about human space exploration, understanding the origins of the universe, and working with a passionate and diverse team to make a difference? If you are, we need you!
We need your talent, teamwork, and energy to help us achieve great things that inspire people all over the globe. We need you to bring creative ideas and diverse backgrounds to help us envision, shape, and deliver systems that will enable the exploration of space while benefiting people here on Earth. We are excited about what we do, and we need you on our team as we take on exciting challenges for NASA’s pursuits in deep space exploration. As NASA’s largest engineering solutions provider working together with NASA at centers across the United States.
We have an exciting opportunity for a Project Manager to join the team with Aerodyne Industries, a teammate company.
Position Summary
We are seeking a Project Manager to lead a rapid-turn design, build, certification, test, and integration effort for a Suit Mass Simulator supporting a vehicle launch campaign planned for 2027. This project is expected to move quickly from concept refinement through hardware delivery and vehicle integration, with a near-term target of approximately five months for design maturity, fabrication, test, certification, and delivery.
The Suit Mass Simulator will represent the mass properties of the flight suit system in a stowed launch configuration and will mechanically interface with the vehicle's don/doff station. The hardware is expected to support launch-loads characterization by capturing loads/environmental data during vehicle operation. The final configuration may include mechanical mass-simulator hardware, adjustable ballast or mass-property refinement features, instrumentation, data acquisition, vehicle power interfaces, and C&DH/telemetry interfaces.
This role requires a technically fluent PM who can lead across mechanical design, electrical/avionics design, project engineering, systems engineering, test, certification, procurement, customer/interface management, and schedule execution in a highly compressed timeframe. The successful candidate must be comfortable operating in an environment where requirements, interfaces, funding path, technical margins, and certification approach are still being clarified while execution is already underway.
The ideal candidate is not simply a project administrator. This role requires a PM who can understand the engineering conversation well enough to know when a mechanical design concern, avionics interface issue, certification gap, test limitation, or evolving mass-property target is becoming a project-level risk.
This person should be comfortable leading a fast-moving team where the plan is being built while the project is already in motion. They should be able to impose structure without slowing the team down, force clarity on interfaces and decision ownership, and keep the project moving toward delivery without allowing unresolved technical assumptions to quietly become schedule debt.
Key Responsibilities
Lead the overall planning and execution of a quick-turn design-build-certify-integrate project supporting HLS / Blue Origin vehicle integration milestones.
Develop and maintain the integrated project plan, including scope, schedule, budget, staffing, procurement, design maturity, test readiness, certification, delivery, and integration milestones.
Coordinate project execution across mechanical design, drafting, electrical design, avionics/data acquisition, project engineering, systems engineering, test, safety/certification, and customer stakeholders.
Drive early definition and closure of project fundamentals, including team structure, funding path, interface ownership, technical authority path, certification approach, minimum viable test program, and delivery expectations.
Establish and manage the project's critical path, with particular focus on design maturity, long-lead procurements, instrumentation/DAQ approach, vehicle power and C&DH interfaces, fabrication lead times, qualification/protoqualification testing, and integration readiness.
Lead regular project status reviews, risk reviews, action tracking, interface coordination, and decision forums.
Coordinate with vehicle interface owners, suit-system stakeholders, vehicle integration teams, and internal engineering organizations to ensure project decisions remain aligned with vehicle launch and integration needs.
Ensure the mass simulator design can accommodate evolving suit mass properties, including center of gravity, moment of inertia, ballast strategy, and fidelity trade decisions.
Manage technical, schedule, cost, and interface risks associated with changing suit design data, uncertain load environments, evolving mass-property targets, and late-breaking certification or integration requirements.
Support definition of the appropriate test and certification approach, including functional testing, design review, mass-properties verification, vibration testing, data acquisition verification, and environmental test rationale.
Ensure project documentation, design artifacts, certification products, interface agreements, risk posture, and delivery records are maintained at a level appropriate for flight integration hardware.
Escalate issues early when technical uncertainty, resource gaps, funding delays, or external interface dependencies threaten the project's ability to meet delivery and integration commitments.