Jose Caraballo
Aviation Safety Program Liaison
Jose Caraballo is the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance liaison to the Aircraft Management Division and Facility System Safety program executive.
Caraballo has worked at Langley Research Center for over 23 years. He served as the deputy director of the Safety and Mission Assurance Office since 2015; in this role he served as the center occupational health officer and also was responsible for overseeing the Center Clinic operations and to make sure that personnel were receiving the proper care required by law and NASA.
In 2020, when the COVID-19 virus created a worldwide pandemic, Caraballo’s role realigned to provide center management with information, guidance and recommendations regarding the pandemic. He had to work closely with the center chief medical officer, agency medical groups and other agencies to ensure that the center was following the latest guidelines and requirements to prevent an outbreak of the pandemic within Langley.
Prior to these roles, Caraballo served as the center safety manager, beginning in 2006. In this role he led the Safety and Facility Assurance Branch to ensure the proper implementation of center, agency and federal requirements for mishap investigations, fire and rescue, emergency preparedness and continuity of operations, and occupational safety and industrial hygiene. Late, he worked with the new Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) research group that will be developing and building UAVs and testing their safety software in an indoors facility.
Before becoming the safety manager, Caraballo supported Langley’s Mission Assurance Branch as a System Safety engineer. In this position, he served as the Product Assurance Manager (PAM) for the CALIPSO program from 2001 to 2006. As the PAM, he was responsible for ensuring program success through the implementation of System Safety, Operational Safety, Reliability, Software Assurance and Quality assurance disciplines. This program was a joint venture with the French Space Agency and it required his leadership to coordinate the implementation of the mission assurance requirements with the French Space Agency and its contractor, the Langley team and Ball Aerospace, Kennedy Space Center-Vandenberg, NASA Headquarters, and Goddard Space Flight Center. As the safety engineer in the branch, he worked with the aviation system safety officer to review procedures for aviation operations to identify risks, hazards and mitigations.
Caraballo worked at Kennedy for seven years as a Facility System Safety engineer in the Industrial Safety Branch. In this role, he developed and implemented policies and procedures regarding the Kennedy Industrial and Payloads Safety programs. He reviewed facility designs and modifications to ensure compliance with center, agency, federal and industry standards to protect personnel from harm and facilities from damage. He investigated and evaluated contractors’ and NASA organizations’ mishaps and their Corrective Actions to prevent reoccurrence. He also evaluated payload packages in support of the Ground Safety Review Panel.
Caraballo started his career working for the U.S. Army as a safety engineer for the Aviation Systems Command. In that role, he was the safety engineer for several aircrafts, which included all the fixed wing aircraft, CH-47 (Chinock), special operations aircraft and the special projects Ground Support Equipment. In this position, he was required to review designs and upgrades and airworthiness flight releases for those aircraft. He conducted operations reviews and audits to ensure compliance with Army regulation. His role as a System Safety engineer was to ensure that the aircrafts were able to meet the operations requirements safely.
Caraballo received his master’s in engineering management from the University of Central Florida in 1994 and his bachelor’s in industrial engineering from the University of Puerto Rico in 1986. He has received numerous awards, including the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal (2012).