Senior Product Engineer (Mechanisms IPT Lead) full_time

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 Vehicle Systems and Integrated Test team at Relativity Space is a small, dynamic group situated in the Vehicle Engineering organization specializing in cross-functional vehicle development trades, designing in operability, defining Concept of Operations, and determining vehicle verification activities. Our team is responsible for the integrated stages and vehicles. We act as the engineering focal for the vehicle throughout its lifecycle, consistently managing upstream and downstream impacts. We are experts at doing things for the first time, tackling the tough integrated problems, coordinating planning, setting engineering definition for operations, and finding the right balance between performance, launch/build rate, and reliability. We do this by determining requirements, verification events, tools, guidance, and processes all with operability in mind. On this team you’ll work with every function of the company to help design, build, test, fly, recover, and reuse Terran R. 

About the Role: 

In this role you will act as Integrated Product Team Lead for a variety of complex and highly cross-functional mechanism systems. As an IPT lead, you will interface with functional disciplines of the mechanism system to drive program execution and resolution of technical issues. IPT leads are responsible for identifying and decomposing requirements, optimizing verification events, and resolving risks across the entire life cycle of the mechanism system – inclusive of design, ground and flight operations, and reuse. As a project leader, IPT leads plan and coordinate resources required over the life of the product, assign responsibility for activities to team members, drive program execution and resolution of technical issues, identify corrective actions to improve team performance and future project execution. IPT leads are expected to take on a variety of unscripted, unexpected responsibilities to remove roadblocks for program execution. Examples could be identifying, procuring and installing sensors for development tests, writing test automation, designing test fixtures, authoring test plans and readiness reviews, heading root causes analysis, or determining risk mitigations paths. This role requires occasional travel to our test & launch sites and may additionally require shifted schedules or weekend work for critical milestones.

Successful candidates in this role will analyze decision paths and drive recommendations that balance the needs of all the functional teams. You will be responsible to identify gaps, future roadblocks, and balance priorities. High judgment, technical depth, strong leadership, low ego, and strategic influence are foundational elements for this role.

Job responsibilities include:

• Drive development tests and functional verification events of the system by determining test objectives, requirements, authoring test plans, and executing tests
• Identify risks and build mitigation plans that are achievable within the cost and schedule allowed by the program.
• Determine system build, test, and fly CONOPs and establish checkouts and success criteria
• Help responsible engineers decompose requirements to a meaningful level while keeping them as lean as possible
• Identify and resolve technical and logistical challenges across the lifecycle of the system
• Develop and maintain detailed design, development, integration and test schedules

About You:  

• Experience delivering on ambitious schedules, even and especially if unconventional & creative solutions are necessary to do so
• Bachelor’s degree in engineering or related field and 5+ years of relevant experience

Nice to haves but not required:  

• Proven experience in manufacturing, assembly, and testing of complex mechanical systems
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Excellent communication skills with demonstrated experience summarizing and communicating complex technical information to a wide audience
• Leadership or coordination experience in a multidisciplinary engineering project and demonstrated ability to lead by influence and collaborate with technical owners to establish a plan without crowding out their ownership

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.