Vehicle Structures Design Engineer II

Relativity Space•Long Beach, CA

3d•$104,000 - $143,000

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 and meet the growing demand for launch capacity. Joining Relativity means becoming part of something where autonomy, ownership, and impact exist at every level. Employees solve problems that haven’t been solved before, helping develop a rocket, a factory, and a business from the ground up. Collaboration across teams, shaping decisions, and seeing work come to life in record time are key aspects of the work environment. Creativity and technical rigor go hand in hand, and employee voices help define the company's direction. This role offers an opportunity to leave a mark on the product, process, and culture, while working on a tangible and momentum-building product. The Structures and Mechanisms team is responsible for the full design, build, and test lifecycle of Terran R’s integrated structures and flight mechanisms. Team members work on highly iterative mechanisms that move or tight-margin structures that shouldn’t, gaining hands-on hardware ownership and seeing the rocket come to life on the factory floor. The department shares design principles, tools, and an integrated approach, providing a comprehensive view of Terran R. Team members work on multiple parts, not just within a single subsystem, and are empowered to make decisions that directly impact flight hardware. Beyond first flight, the role is critical in refining for manufacturability and speed. The scope of work for the Vehicle Structures Design Engineer II encompasses designing parts and systems from early conceptualization through full release and supporting manufacturing for primary and secondary structures related to all stages of the Terran R rocket. The role requires creative thinking and innovation to optimize part geometry, ensure assembly packaging, prevent interferences and excessive gapping, reduce mass, and make parts fully manufacturable. Responsibilities include managing parts and assemblies throughout their lifecycles in PLM, and controlling BOM structuring and configuration management for many systems across the vehicle. Success in this role requires being self-motivated, adaptable, and able to lead projects to completion in a fast-paced environment. The ideal candidate has significant mechanical or structural design experience and a proven track record of completing collaborative projects effectively. Weekly tasks involve designing flight components for the Terran R vehicle using NX/TeamCenter, creating and releasing drawings, and supporting the fabrication of components. Strong organizational skills are needed for documenting work and presenting recommendations.

Requirements

2+ years of experience in a design engineering role
Bachelor’s degree in engineering or a related discipline
Experience with industry-standard CAD packages such as NX, CATIA, Creo, or SOLIDWORKS
Fundamental knowledge of structures strength, stability and fatigue failure mechanisms

Nice To Haves

1+ years of experience with NX/Teamcenter PLM
1+ years of experience with GD&T and drafting

Responsibilities

Design and develop piece parts, assemblies, and systems from early conceptualization up through full initial release – working with large machined metallic components, sheet metal, composites, formed panels, and more
Integrate critical design for manufacturing choices in direct coordination with the manufacturing engineering team
Perform packaging assessment of systems – resolve interferences, perform tolerance stack analyses, validate hardware stacks and fastener selections, integrate nominal gapping and shimming strategies, and more
Support BOM and configuration management of various systems across multiple vehicles
Create and release drawings as part of system release sprints post-CDR, including incorporating GD&T as primary definition