Senior Mission Design and Navigation Engineer

Relativity Space•Long Beach, CA

6d•$148,000 - $222,000

About The Position

Relativity Space is building rockets to serve today’s needs and tomorrow’s breakthroughs. The Terran R vehicle will deliver customer payloads to orbit, meeting the growing demand for launch capacity. The Interplanetary Sciences Program was established to expand access to scientific exploration across our solar system. Its mission is to make planetary research faster, more affordable, and more capable than ever before by rethinking how science missions are designed, built, and operated. The program aims to enable scientists to send instruments to distant worlds without decades of development or prohibitive costs. By creating a sustainable model for interplanetary exploration, we are transforming space science from an occasional event into a continuous process of discovery that accelerates knowledge, broadens participation, and inspires the next generation of explorers. As a Mission Design and Navigation Engineer within the Interplanetary Sciences Program, you will perform mission design activities for our 2028 Mars Orbiter mission. You will perform trajectory and navigation analyses that define how the spacecraft travels to Mars and achieves the orbital conditions required to accomplish its science mission. As the program progresses toward flight, your responsibilities will expand into end-to-end ownership of mission design and navigation, including interplanetary trajectory design, Mars orbit design, orbit determination, navigation data processing, and interfaces with the Deep Space Network (DSN). You will develop the engineering practices, processes, tools, interfaces, and software requirements needed to support mission design and flight navigation. You will work across spacecraft systems, GNC, communications, mission operations, and software teams to ensure the mission can be designed, navigated, and operated successfully from launch through Mars orbital operations.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Astronautical/Aeronautical Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, or a similar technical discipline with 5+ years of related experience
Experience in spacecraft mission design, astrodynamics, flight navigation, orbit determination, or mission design and navigation software development
Strong understanding of orbital mechanics, trajectory analysis, and the engineering methods used to design and navigate spacecraft missions
Experience with radiometric navigation and orbital determination
Ability to work across disciplines and clearly communicate technical decisions, requirements, and tradeoffs to engineering stakeholders
Experience working with software developers to define requirements and architectures for engineering or mission-critical software systems
Software development experience in Python, MATLAB, or similar

Nice To Haves

Experience with MONTE mission design and navigation software and tools
Experience supporting interplanetary or deep-space missions
Experience with the Deep Space Network
Experience processing or analyzing DSN tracking measurements, including Doppler, Range, and Delta-DOR
Experience with flight navigation operations, maneuver design and analysis, or orbit determination
Familiarity with DSN systems, interfaces, documentation, and navigation data products
Familiarity with software and systems configuration management in a mission-critical environment

Responsibilities

Own mission design and associated trajectory analysis for the 2028 Mars Orbiter mission
Develop and optimize interplanetary trajectories and Mars orbital trajectories subject to spacecraft, communications, operations, and science constraints
Grow into technical ownership of flight navigation, including orbit determination, trajectory estimation, maneuver analysis, and navigation data processing
Define requirements, interfaces, and methods for processing DSN radiometric tracking measurements, including Doppler, range, and Delta-DOR
Serve as the primary navigation interface between the Interplanetary Sciences Program and the Deep Space Network
Develop and maintain mission design and navigation tools, software requirements, architectures, and analysis capabilities
Act as an authority for Mission Design and Navigation, working across GNC, spacecraft systems, communications, software, and mission operations