Sr Director Mechanical Design Engineering Tooling

About the Team: 

The Tooling and Factory Automation team sits at the intersection of design manufacturing and automation making everything from large-scale structural fixtures to small tools that directly enable Terran R’s production. As a design group embedded within the manufacturing organization we dig deep into the needs of our internal partners to understand root problems propose solutions and deliver hardware to help build faster scale smarter and work better. The team is also at the forefront of Relativity’s growing factory automation efforts an increasingly critical part of scaling production of Terran R at existing and future facilities. You’ll have the autonomy to make decisions field solutions and see them in action on the factory floor. Ultimately you’re not just designing tools or automated processes; you’re defining how rockets and factories get built.

About the Role:

• Lead and develop a high-performing team of tooling engineers delivering solutions that enable safe efficient and repeatable production.
• Define and execute the long-term tooling strategy aligning priorities across design manufacturing and operations to support current and future production goals.
• Oversee design fabrication and commissioning of complex tooling systems that improve manufacturability quality and throughput across multiple work centers.
• Manage the tooling project portfolio driving cost schedule and technical performance to ensure readiness for both production and development programs.
• Partner with design engineering and manufacturing teams to ensure tooling readiness for new product introductions and continuous product evolution.
• Standardize best practices for design documentation preventive maintenance and configuration control to ensure reliability and compliance across all tooling assets.

About You:  

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Manufacturing or Aerospace Engineering (or equivalent experience).
• 12+ years of experience in tooling design manufacturing engineering or related field with 6+ years in people leadership. 
• Expertise with CAD and PLM systems (e.g. NX Teamcenter CATIA SolidWorks).
• Demonstrated experience leading large-scale tooling initiatives for complex hardware (structures assemblies or propulsion).
• Strong understanding of GD&T tolerance analysis materials and manufacturing processes (machining composites weldments additive). Proven ability to manage cross-functional programs balancing cost schedule and performance.

Nice to haves but not required:  

• Experience in aerospace automotive or oil & gas production environments with rapid development cycles.
• Background in Lean manufacturing and Design for Manufacturability (DFM).
• Experience with factory automation lifting and handling systems or test tooling.
• Strong leadership presence with ability to coach and scale engineering organizations.

What We Do

Relativity Space is on a mission to better connect humanity to space and the universe beyond our planet. Our medium-to-heavy lift reusable rocket Terran R 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.

Why Work With Us

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.

Gallery