Vehicle Structures Engineer II

Company Overview:  

At Relativity Space, we have two audacious goals: to build the next great commercial launch company with Terran R and to become America's leading force in additive manufacturing innovation. Both contribute to our long-term vision of creating humanity’s industrial base on Mars, paving the way for interplanetary life to expand the possibilities of the human experience. This journey begins right here on Earth – where we design, build, and fly rockets to deliver customer payloads to orbit. Terran R, our medium-to-heavy lift reusable rocket, fulfills the growing demand for launch capacity, thanks to our iterative approach that accelerates design, testing, and development while minimizing costs. While our groundbreaking research and development in 3D printing pushes the boundaries of large-scale additive manufacturing.

Your journey with us is more than just a job – it’s an opportunity to shape the future of aerospace technology, additive manufacturing, and the human experience alongside a community of passionate, creative individuals. Join us on this extraordinary journey, as we work together to transform our vision into reality.

About the Team:  

The Structures team at Relativity is responsible for the design, analysis, testing, and manufacturing our launch vehicle integrated structures, as well as flight mechanisms. As a part of this team, you will be given hardware ownership for the full product lifecycle, and get the opportunity to conveniently validate your hardware through testing at our factory of the future, headquartered in Long Beach, CA. Unique to Relativity, you will get to work across many teams to develop world-class integrated launch vehicles. Overall, this team was critical to the launch success of Terran 1 and is now playing a key role in the development and execution of the Terran R program.

About the Role: 

To support our mission of changing the way rockets are built and flown, you will be responsible for bringing critical flight structures and supporting components from design concept to physical hardware ready to launch. The scope of work encompasses a full design cycle, including conceptualization, design, analysis, manufacturing and testing for primary and secondary structures related to Thrust Structure, Propellant Tanks, Interstage or Fairing, to name a few. Here are some examples of projects you could be working on:

• Innovative conceptualization of structural load path, design for complex structures and adjacent system packaging
• Review of static & dynamic load inputs, material properties & test as well as structural systems & subsystems requirements
• Analysis and sizing of flight structures to ensure timely design reviews and drawing release
• Develop and support hardware test campaigns, including test integration, operation and result evaluation
• Support manufacturing process development, including tools or fixtures design or analysis
• Your mission will be to deliver these projects on time and budget. In order to achieve this, you will be working closely with our additive, design, test and loads & dynamics 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 into completion. Ideally, you are someone who has come from a fast paced, aerospace environment, having completed difficult projects while collaborating effectively with other key groups.

On a weekly basis, you will be designing flight or ground components using NX/TeamCenter, performing analysis using Nastran, ANSYS and/or hand calculations, creating and releasing drawings as well as supporting fabrication of your components. Your designs will be optimized for our additive manufacturing methods, for which fundamental knowledge is crucial. You will also use your strong organizational skills to properly document your work and move forward your recommendation when decisions are needed.

About You:  

• 2+ years of experience in a full cycle design engineering role 
• Bachelor's degree in engineering or related technical discipline
• Working knowledge of structural analysis and test (from hand calculations to advanced analysis)
• Fundamental knowledge of structures strength, stability and fatigue failure mechanisms
• Fundamental knowledge of additive and traditional manufacturing processes

Nice to haves but not required:  

• 2+ years of aerospace experience and an advance engineering degree
• Extensive experience with NX/TeamCenter
• Experience using Nastran and ANSYS

Relativity Space offers competitive salary and equity, a generous vacation policy, an annual L&D stipend and more! 

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.