Vehicle Simulation Engineer I

Posted 23 Days Ago
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Long Beach, CA
Hybrid
119K-151K Annually
Entry level
Aerospace • Hardware • Robotics • Software • Manufacturing
We are building the future of aerospace.
The Role
The role involves analyzing engineering design trades, developing software tools for trajectory optimization, and collaborating across vehicle engineering teams.
Summary Generated by Built In

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 Integrated Performance team owns the holistic view of how Terran R comes together, ensuring that every system on the vehicle and ground is capable of achieving our ambitious objectives. The team works across the full launch system, from trajectory design and aerodynamics to reliability analysis and beyond, with direct influence on all parts of the product lifecycle, from conceptual design to post-flight data review. Beyond analysis, team members engage hands-on with hardware and operations, with the mission and authority to drive meaningful programmatic change. With a unique organizational structure, the integrated performance team spans multiple technical domains and embeds directly with partner teams to solve the hardest multi-disciplinary problems. The team operates with a rare scale: large enough to support complex development, yet small enough that individual contributors have meaningful impact.

The Performance Team is responsible for driving interdisciplinary mission and vehicle design decisions across Relativity's Integrated Performance teams. In order to do so, the team has the following core responsibilities: 

  • Closely work with key design teams to integrate their latest design data into a full simulation of the customer missions
  • Develop and leverage software tooling for optimizing the launch and orbital trajectory of each of the key customer missions. 
  • Lead interdisciplinary design trade analyses to inform key decisions about the vehicle, the mission trajectories, or the mission ConOps. 
  • Define and maintain high-level vehicle and trajectory design requirements to inform the overall design process.

About the Role:

You will be responsible for:

  • Carrying out analysis for engineering design trades and driving design decisions based on the results. 
  • Implementing, maintaining, and improving software tooling in a variety of languages, ranging from core simulation capabilities to peripheral analysis utilities. 
  • Maintaining, establishing, and sometimes leading cross-functional collaboration with key teams across Vehicle Engineering.

About You:

  • An undergraduate or graduate degree (BS/MS/PhD) in Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, or related field
  • Demonstrated critical thinking skills and ability to solve problems from first principles. 
  • Have previously worked on projects that required you to operate in multi-disciplinary teams. 
  • Have previously worked on projects that required you to utilize numerical techniques such as ODE's and optimization routines. 
  • Proficiency in high-level programming languages (e.g. Python, Julia, MATLAB).

Nice to haves but not required:  

  • Familiarity with launch vehicles and trajectory design. 
  • Prior work in a startup or agile development environment. 
  • Demonstrated experiences in taking complex analysis results and clearly communicating conclusions and recommendations to decision makers. 
  • Experience working with advanced software development practices such as Docker, Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD), and dependency management.

At Relativity Space, we are committed to transparency and fairness in our compensation practices. Actual compensation will be determined based on experience, qualifications, and other job-related factors.
Compensation is only one part of our total rewards package. 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.

Hiring Range:
$119,000$150,700 USD

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Top Skills

Julia
Matlab
Python

What the Team is Saying

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The Company
HQ: Long Beach, CA
1,300 Employees
Year Founded: 2016

What We Do

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.

Why Work With Us

We believe in a future where interplanetary life fundamentally expands the possibilities for the human experience. In realizing this, our long-term goal is to create humanity’s industrial base on Mars. The first step toward this long-term vision starts here on Earth – building rockets and pushing the boundaries of additive manufacturing.

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Relativity Space Teams

Team
Launching the Future of Humanity in Space
Team
Engineering
About our Teams

Relativity Space Offices

Hybrid Workspace

Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.

Given the dynamic nature and diversity of roles at Relativity Space, there is no one-size-fits-all approach for how every team works best.

Typical time on-site: Flexible
HQLong Beach, CA
Cape Canaveral, FL
Center, MS
Kent, WA
Washington, DC
Learn more

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