Relativity Space

Vehicle Dynamics Engineer I

Long Beach, California, United States

$97-124k

Full Time

22 minutes ago

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Job description

At Relativity Space, we have two audacious goals: to build the next great commercial launch company with Terran R and to become America's leading force in additive manufacturing innovation. Both contribute to our long-term vision of creating humanity’s industrial base on Mars, paving the way for interplanetary life to expand the possibilities of the human experience. This journey begins right here on Earth – where we design, build, and fly rockets to deliver customer payloads to orbit. Terran R, our medium-to-heavy lift reusable rocket, fulfills the growing demand for launch capacity, thanks to our iterative approach that accelerates design, testing, and development while minimizing costs. While our groundbreaking research and development in 3D printing pushes the boundaries of large-scale additive manufacturing.

Your journey with us is more than just a job – it’s an opportunity to shape the future of aerospace technology, additive manufacturing, and the human experience alongside a community of passionate, creative individuals. Join us on this extraordinary journey, as we work together to transform our vision into reality.

About the Team:

Relativity’s Integrated Performance teams ensure that our products work across all systems and disciplines, from trajectory design to aerodynamics to reliability analysis and beyond. Our groups size the Terran R rocket, design its missions for customer success, reliability, and reusability, and ensure that every system on the rocket and ground is engineered correctly for the demanding environments of launch and entry. Recently, we completed the preliminary design and analysis of Terran R including Relativity’s first-ever work on launch vehicle reusability, spanning advanced trajectory simulations, wind tunnel testing, and structures analysis, among many other projects.

As a part of the Integrated Performance group, the Loads & Dynamics team is directly responsible for digesting forcing functions and building models to produce loads for hardware owners and inform higher-level vehicle performance goals. The Loads & Dynamics team works heavily with partner teams in Aerodynamics, Guidance Navigation and Control (GNC), Propulsion, Structures, and Avionics to balance immediate hardware needs with updated analysis & modeling.

About the Role:

We develop loads from initial concept to data review for all hardware on Terran R
We help mature hardware designs through keen understanding of mechanical structures fundamentals and effective, direct communication
We build, validate, and document our finite-element and statistical energy models to generate component load predictions
We’re also responsible for developing random vibration and shock specifications and ensuring hardware across the vehicle are qualified to those specifications
We do both quick-look and deep-dive signal processing to inform component loads and random vibration specifications
We work with our partner teams to inform and deliver inputs for complex events like liftoff, stage separation, entry, and touchdown

About You:

Undergrad degree in Engineering or related field
Demonstrated interest in system dynamics, vibration, acoustics, or similar
Demonstrated Python, MATLAB or similar experience for engineering analysis

Nice to haves but not required:

Graduate degree in Engineering or related field
High-speed or modal data acquisition & signal processing experience.
Experience with NASTRAN, VA One, or Wave6
Experience with Coupled Loads Analysis (CLA) or Multibody Dynamics (MBD)
Experience with liquid rocket engines, launch vehicle analysis, or similar in aerospace

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:

$97,000—$124,300 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.