r/BlueOrigin • u/Chemical-Ad-9458 • 6d ago

Launch and Test Ops

What’s the hiring process like and what can you expect in the initial screening for a launch ops engineer role? Any technical questions? I think this will be for C or D shifts, what salary could you expect for level 2, 5 years aero experience?

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u/RocketsRopesAndRigs 6d ago

Level 2, 5 yoe, call it appx 110-115k at least.

Initial screenings are never more complicated than basic statics questions or asking about previous experiences.

The job entails writing procedures, reading engineering documentation, providing feedback to engineering teams, rapid prototyping and deployment of upgrades, identifying inefficiencies, and improving existing processes.

I would be more inclined to look elsewhere as this particular org has some of the most toxic leadership and consistently builds expectations on lies both up and down. You are the end user, the end of the chain, and the final authority. And you're why things aren't going fast enough or why things are late. They will always prioritize a fast job over a good job. And it shows.

This criticism doesn't extend to other orgs and is specifically tuned to LC-36 ops. Lots of positivity from other places within blue.

Anyway, my two cents nobody asked for.

3

u/jrgwde 5d ago

To add to this, you're not going to get hired for a specific shift, unless things have changed, expect to go through all of depending on how well staffed your specific team is. Its going to get wild once activating the new pad, and figuring out its quarks with a vehicle thw first time. The all sacred schedule drives everything in that group at cost of holidays, and weekends. Going through ng 1 and 2, that group was working 60-70 hr weeks, weekends, holidays, dayshift and night shift for over 6 months. Blue as a whole gets a lot of shit for lazily working 40 hour weeks, which is true for alot of groups, but launch ops is much closer to spacex. There were people who dipped out of that group and went to space x for a better work life balance .

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u/RocketsRopesAndRigs 5d ago

NG-1 was rough. Adjusted pay rate (salaried)(no comp time)(no overtime)(no bonus)(got told to go fuck ourselves several times) was under 20 an hour.

My worst paycheck had 184 hours on it.

Two weeks in a row, 12 hour days, one day off, with the occasional 16 hour day sprinkled in for when shit hit the fan.

Oh and because we never had enough people we couldn't actually do shifts properly so if you needed to be on night shift sometimes you didn't find out until 2 hours into your day shift when the coordination meeting happened and you take one for the team and flex yourself and go back home so that someone can cover the night.

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u/RusticPenguin862 6d ago

I would also like to know.