Brian Muirhead has worked on numerous spacecraft and technology projects since joining NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1978, including the Galileo mission to Jupiter, and the Shuttle Imaging Radar-C. He has been a group supervisor and section manager in the Mechanical Systems Division. He was responsible for the design, development, test, and launch of the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft that landed successfully on Mars on July 4, 1997. Following this successful landing he was named project manager. He served as project manager of the Deep Impact comet impact project from formulation through the critical design review in 2002. He worked as the chief engineer of the Mars Science Laboratory until August 2004 when he became chief engineer of JPL. In February 2007, Brian was named chief architect and program systems engineer for the Constellation Program, which included responsibility for the architecture for a new human exploration spaceflight system to the Moon and beyond. He returned to JPL as the chief engineer at the Executive Council level in December 2009.

Brian received his Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from the University of New Mexico in 1977 and a Master of Science in aeronautical engineering from Caltech in 1982. He is the recipient of NASA's Exceptional Achievement Medal for his work on SIR-C, and the Exceptional Leadership Medals for his work on Mars Pathfinder and Constellation. He was designated a JPL Fellow in 2009. He is the author of "High Velocity Leadership" (Harper Business, 1999, with William Simon), and "Going to Mars" (Simon and Schuster, 2004, with Garfield and Judy Reeves-Stevens).