Science Payload Responsible Engineer/Scientist

Relativity Space•Long Beach, CA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

Relativity Space is building rockets to serve today’s needs and tomorrow’s breakthroughs, with their Terran R vehicle designed to deliver customer payloads to orbit. This role is within the Interplanetary Sciences Program, which aims to make planetary research faster, more affordable, and more capable by rethinking mission design, build, and operations. The program seeks to enable scientists to send instruments to distant worlds without decades of development or prohibitive costs. The Science Payload Responsible Engineer/Scientist will lead the delivery, integration, and operations support for a science instrument suite. This is a highly technical role for a leader with deep technical and scientific competency, who is confident in making risk-based decisions and has a sense of personal ownership over the instrument’s success from build phase through on-orbit operations. The role involves serving as the responsible engineer to ensure delivered instruments meet desired science capability and proceed smoothly through environmental testing, spacecraft integration, commissioning, and in-space operations. This requires understanding both science and engineering, managing risk proactively, making hard decisions under uncertainty, owning outcomes, communicating clearly to stakeholders, and advocating for engineering systems that enable exceptional science collection. The position operates within a fast-moving, lean, multi-disciplinary team driven by mission success.

Requirements

Master's degree in planetary science, engineering, physics, or a related technical discipline.
3+ years of experience in science research.
3+ years of experience working on a spacecraft payload through multiple phases (e.g., formulation, build, testing, integration, on-spacecraft testing, commissioning, operations).
Relentless curiosity and a desire to understand and optimize systems.
Familiarity with Earth and planetary science missions and the unique constraints on instruments (power, mass, thermal, data rate, radiation).
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience with planetary science instruments.

Responsibilities

Serve as the responsible engineer for working with partners to ensure delivered instruments meet or exceed desired science capability.
Oversee instruments through environmental testing, spacecraft integration, commissioning, and in-space operations.
Understand the science and engineering aspects of the instruments.
Manage risk proactively and make hard decisions under uncertainty.
Own the outcomes of instrument delivery and operations.
Communicate clearly to multiple stakeholders.
Act as an advocate for engineering systems that support and enable exceptional science collection on current and future missions.
Operate as part of a fast-moving, lean, multi-disciplinary team driven by mission success.
Perform occasional travel to partner institutions, test facilities, and mission integration sites (<10% time).
Engage in shift work and on-call availability during critical mission phases including launch, commissioning, and early operations.