Staff Mechanical Engineer (Mechanisms)
Relativity
Long Beach, California
Full-Time
$164,000
OfficeSenior
At Relativity Space, were building rockets to serve todays needs and tomorrows breakthroughs. Our Terran R vehicle will deliver customer payloads to orbit, meeting the growing demand for launch capacity. But thats 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 havent been solved before, helping develop a rocket, a factory, and a business from the ground up. Whether youre in propulsion, manufacturing, software, avionics, or a corporate function, youll 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 were writing together. Now is a unique moment in time where its 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.
The Structures and Mechanisms team is responsible for the full design, build, and test lifecycle of Terran Rs integrated structures and flight mechanisms. Whether you're working on highly iterative mechanisms that move or tight-margin structures that shouldnt, youll 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, youll play a critical role in refining for manufacturability and speed.
To support our mission of changing the way rockets are built and flown, you will guide the design of Terran R mechanisms such as stage separation, payload deployment, aero control features and landing gear. To be successful, you will be working collaboratively with partner groups such as structures, avionics and fluids; and leverage our additive process and design freedom to design and build better products. The scope of work encompasses a full design cycle, including conceptualization, trade studies, design, analysis, manufacturing and testing of components.
Here are some examples of projects you could be working on:
Your mission will be to deliver on time and budget. You will be challenged to integrate as many subsystems within our printed primary structure, and support the development of our additive process to make this a reality. To achieve this, you will be working closely with our vehicle design, test and loads teams, as well as our additive and manufacturing teams.
In order to be successful in this role, you should be someone who is self-motivated, thrives in ambiguity, and is able to lead his or her own projects to completion. Ideally, you are someone who has come from a fast-paced environment, having completed difficult projects with extreme ownership while collaborating effectively with other key groups.
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 accommodations@relativityspace.com.