Sr Software Systems Engineer

Relativity Space • Long Beach, CA

12h

About The Position

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: At Relativity Space, the success of our Terran R vehicle operations relies on software systems that are robust, well-integrated, and rigorously tested. The Software Systems Engineering team is a multidisciplinary function responsible for ensuring that the integrated software system that supports vehicle operations is functional, scalable, performant, and ready for test and launch activities in alignment with the program schedule and risk posture. We bridge the gap between vehicle software, ground systems, and hardware teams to ensure reliable end-to-end system functionality. Our focus includes system-level requirements development, safety engineering and analysis, software-hardware integration, risk management, system-level debugging, launch-readiness verification, and operations support. We play a critical role in mission success by ensuring all software components work seamlessly across the full stack—from control centers to the vehicle in flight. About the Role: Own and develop Software system-level requirements, drive consensus and alignment among stakeholders, and ensure requirements traceability to verification and validation activities Identify, document, escalate, and manage software risks to the operational vehicle system; relentlessly drive strategic and thoughtful mitigations that balance complexity, schedule, and operational risk Own and drive Software system-level design verification and validation activities, including development and execution of test matrices and test plans with traceability to requirements, and identification of pass/fail criteria Define and build process around software configuration and change management and related tooling; provide critical feedback and input to tooling development teams; help educate users and software development teams Support mission-critical Software system certification and licensing deliverables that include failure mode analyses and verification artifacts Support test and launch activities on behalf of Software -- coordination of integration and test activities between Engineering and Operations, anomaly investigations, pre-test/launch readiness evaluations, post-test/launch data reviews, and on-console support

Requirements

• Undergraduate or graduate degree (BS/MS/PhD) in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field
• 2+ years of experience in software systems design/analysis; system-level test; systems engineering; or equivalent
• Familiarity with basic software development and test/verification concepts such as version control, configuration management, debugging, static analysis, unit/integration/system testing, etc.
• Familiarity with Python, GitLab/Git, CI/CD
• 25-50% travel to our Stennis and Cape Canaveral sites to support software bring up and vehicle test/launch operations
• Demonstrated problem-solving and communication skills

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with C++, Rust
• Working knowledge of fundamentals of launch vehicles
• Experience with data analysis and visualization, especially with time series data and SQL databases

Responsibilities

• Own and develop Software system-level requirements, drive consensus and alignment among stakeholders, and ensure requirements traceability to verification and validation activities
• Identify, document, escalate, and manage software risks to the operational vehicle system; relentlessly drive strategic and thoughtful mitigations that balance complexity, schedule, and operational risk
• Own and drive Software system-level design verification and validation activities, including development and execution of test matrices and test plans with traceability to requirements, and identification of pass/fail criteria
• Define and build process around software configuration and change management and related tooling; provide critical feedback and input to tooling development teams; help educate users and software development teams
• Support mission-critical Software system certification and licensing deliverables that include failure mode analyses and verification artifacts
• Support test and launch activities on behalf of Software -- coordination of integration and test activities between Engineering and Operations, anomaly investigations, pre-test/launch readiness evaluations, post-test/launch data reviews, and on-console support

Benefits

• Relativity Space offers competitive salary and equity, a generous PTO and sick leave policy, parental leave, an annual learning and development stipend, and more!
• To see some of the benefits & perks we offer, please visit here.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level