Staff Software Platform Responsible Engineer

Relativity Space•Long Beach, CA

4h•$181,000 - $248,500

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: 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. About the Role: Own the base operating system image and board support package across every Linux-running processor in the payload — NAS controllers, compute nodes, payload controller — ensuring each one boots a known, validated, reproducible image built through a rigorous Yocto-based pipeline. Design and maintain board support packages for each hardware platform, including kernel configuration, custom kernel module integration, and device tree configuration for custom hardware, bridging the gap between silicon and the application software that runs on top. Build and validate the full boot sequence (U-Boot or equivalent) and post-power-on-reset automated recovery sequences, so the payload can recover from radiation upsets and return to a known-good state without ground intervention. Develop the system update and image deployment mechanisms, NFS server configuration for shared filesystem access across the payload, and system logging and health telemetry infrastructure that the rest of the software team depends on. Harden each image for the space environment — minimal attack surface, no unnecessary services, watchdog timer integration at the OS level, and filesystem integrity checks designed to survive years of radiation exposure.

Requirements

BS/MS in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering and 5+ years of relevant experience
Strong hands-on experience with Yocto Project / OpenEmbedded build systems — you've built and maintained custom Linux distributions, not just consumed them
Demonstrated BSP development for custom hardware: kernel bringup, device tree debugging, driver framework integration, and getting a serial console to show a login prompt on a board nobody has booted before
Solid C programming skills for kernel modules and low-level system software, with comfort in cross-compilation and toolchain management
Disciplined version control and reproducible build practices — you understand why bit-for-bit reproducibility matters when you can't walk over and re-flash a board

Nice To Haves

Experience with embedded Linux for space, avionics, or other high-reliability applications where the OS must recover gracefully from hardware upsets
Familiarity with radiation upset recovery at the OS level — automated reboot strategies, filesystem integrity validation, and graceful degradation
Experience with both ARM and x86 platform BSP development
Knowledge of real-time Linux considerations (PREEMPT_RT) for time-sensitive control tasks
Hardware lab comfort: serial consoles, JTAG debuggers, and willingness to sit next to an electrical engineer tracing why a device tree node isn't enumerating correctly
Experience with CI/CD pipelines for embedded image builds and automated hardware-in-the-loop testing

Responsibilities

Own the base operating system image and board support package across every Linux-running processor in the payload — NAS controllers, compute nodes, payload controller — ensuring each one boots a known, validated, reproducible image built through a rigorous Yocto-based pipeline.
Design and maintain board support packages for each hardware platform, including kernel configuration, custom kernel module integration, and device tree configuration for custom hardware, bridging the gap between silicon and the application software that runs on top.
Build and validate the full boot sequence (U-Boot or equivalent) and post-power-on-reset automated recovery sequences, so the payload can recover from radiation upsets and return to a known-good state without ground intervention.
Develop the system update and image deployment mechanisms, NFS server configuration for shared filesystem access across the payload, and system logging and health telemetry infrastructure that the rest of the software team depends on.
Harden each image for the space environment — minimal attack surface, no unnecessary services, watchdog timer integration at the OS level, and filesystem integrity checks designed to survive years of radiation exposure.