Vehicle Structures Engineer I (Heat Shield)
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.
The Base Heat Shield Structures team is responsible for the full design, build, and test lifecycle of Terran R’s base heat shield. Our team is responsible for all structure AFT of the engine gimbal plane with the core responsibility to isolate the engines from hazardous atmospheric environments from flight operations. Whether you're working on highly loaded structures under extreme thermal environments or isolating engines from one another you’ll get hands-on hardware ownership and see the rocket coming to life on the factory floor. Our team is organized under the greater Structures and Mechanisms 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:
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 associated with the Terran R Base Heat Shield. Here are some examples of projects you could be working on:
- OML Skins, Base Panels, High Temperature Seals, and internal supporting structures
- 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