Senior Vehicle Structures Design Engineer
Relativity Space · Long Beach, California ·
- Seniority
- Senior
- Category
- Engineering design
- Experience
- 2+ years
- Company size
- 501-1000
- Salary
- USD 132,000 – 198,000
Designs and optimizes rocket structures and mechanisms for Relativity Space’s Terran R vehicle, using CAD/PLM tools and collaborating with manufacturing teams to ensure flight-ready hardware.
At Relativity Space, we’re building rockets to serve today’s needs and tomorrow’s breakthroughs. Our Terran R vehicle will deliver customer payloads to orbit, meeting the growing demand for launch capacity. But that’s just the start. Achieving commercial success with Terran R will unlock new opportunities to advance science, exploration, and innovation, pioneering progress that reaches beyond the known.
Joining Relativity means becoming part of something where autonomy, ownership, and impact exist at every level. Here, you're not just executing tasks; you're solving problems that haven’t been solved before, helping develop a rocket, a factory, and a business from the ground up. Whether you’re in propulsion, manufacturing, software, avionics, or a corporate function, you’ll collaborate across teams, shape decisions, and see your work come to life in record time. Relativity is a place where creativity and technical rigor go hand in hand, and your voice will help define the stories we’re writing together. Now is a unique moment in time where it’s early enough to leave your mark on the product, the process, and the culture, but far enough along that Terran R is tangible and picking up momentum. The most meaningful work of your career is waiting. Join us.
About the Team:
The Structures and Mechanisms team is responsible for the full design, build, and test lifecycle of Terran R’s integrated structures and flight mechanisms. Whether you're working on highly iterative mechanisms that move or tight-margin structures that shouldn’t, you’ll get hands-on hardware ownership and see the rocket coming to life on the factory floor. Both teams fall under one department, sharing design principles, tools, and an integrated approach that provides a comprehensive view of Terran R. Team members work on multiple parts, not just within a single subsystem, and are empowered to make decisions that directly impact flight hardware. Beyond first flight, you’ll play a critical role in refining for manufacturability and speed.
About the Role:
- The scope of work encompasses designing parts and systems from early conceptualization through full release and supporting manufacturing for primary and secondary structures related to all stages of the Terran R rocket. You will need to think creatively and leverage innovation to optimize part geometry, ensure assembly packaging, prevent interferences and excessive gapping, reduce mass, and make parts fully manufacturable. You’ll also assist manage parts and assemblies throughout their lifecycles in PLM, and you’ll control BOM structuring and configuration management for many systems across the vehicle.
- Your responsibilities will include, but not be limited to the following:
- Design and develop piece parts, assemblies, and systems from early conceptualization up through full initial release – working with large machined metallic components, sheet metal, composites, formed panels, and more
- Integrate critical design for manufacturing choices in direct coordination with the manufacturing engineering team
- Perform packaging assessment of systems – resolve interferences, perform tolerance stack analyses, validate hardware stacks and fastener selections, integrate nominal gapping and shimming strategies, and more
- Support BOM and configuration management of various systems across multiple vehicles
- Create and release drawings as part of system release sprints post-CDR, including incorporating GD&T as primary definition In order to be successful in this role, you must be someone who is self-motivated, adaptable and is able to lead your own projects to completion in a fast-paced environment. Ideally, you have significant mechanical or structural design experience and a proven track record completing collaborative projects effectively.
- On a weekly basis, you will be designing flight components for our upcoming Terran R vehicle using NX/TeamCenter, creating and releasing drawings as well as supporting fabrication of your components. You will also use your strong organizational skills to properly document your work and present your recommendations when decisions are needed.
About You:
- 4+ years of experience in a design engineering role
- Bachelor’s degree in engineering or related discipline
- Experience with industry-standard CAD packages such as NX, CATIA, Creo, or SOLIDWORKS
- Fundamental knowledge of structures strength, stability and fatigue failure mechanisms
- Ability to work in the context of large assemblies and effectively navigate large vehicle BOM’s
Nice to haves but not required:
- 2+ years experience with NX/Teamcenter PLM
- 3+ years experience with GD&T and drafting
At Relativity Space, we are committed to transparency and fairness in our compensation practices. Actual compensation will be determined based on experience, qualifications, and other job-related factors.
Compensation is only one part of our total rewards package. Relativity Space offers competitive salary and equity, a generous PTO and sick leave policy, parental leave, an annual learning and development stipend, and more! To see some of the benefits & perks we offer, please visit here.
We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
If you need a reasonable accommodation, please contact us at [email protected].
Please note: Relativity Space does not accept unsolicited resumes, candidate profiles, or referrals from recruitment agencies or search firms. Any unsolicited submission - via email, our website, social media, or directly to an employee - will be deemed the property of Relativity Space, and no fee will be owed absent a current, fully executed agreement with Talent Acquisition that specifically authorizes submissions for the applicable role.