GNC Performance Engineer I

Description

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.

The Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) and Performance teams are responsible for defining and analyzing how Terran R flies, from liftoff to landing. The work combines a variety of disciplines such as advanced modeling, orbital mechanics, software development, and dynamic systems to optimize every phase of flight. You’ll develop flight algorithms, simulate trajectories, and model Terran R’s dynamic behavior across mission profiles. Whether you're early in your career or a seasoned expert, you’ll have the opportunity to own critical pieces of the system, influence design, and see your work fly. The department is part of the Integrated Performance team, uniting key disciplines to drive performance at every stage of the mission.

About the Role:

Carry out analysis for engineering design trades and driving design decisions based on the results.

Implement, maintain, and improve software tooling in a variety of languages, ranging from core simulation capabilities to peripheral analysis utilities.

Maintain, establish, and sometimes lead cross-functional collaboration with key teams across Vehicle Engineering.

Requirements

• An undergraduate or graduate degree (BS/MS/PhD) in Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, or a related field with
• Prior experience doing heavy cross-functional collaboration in a fast-paced environment.
• Notable modern programming language coding experience (e.g. Python, Julia, Rust, C++).
• Demonstrated experience in taking complex analysis results and clearly communicating conclusions and recommendations to facilitate rapid decision-making.
• Familiarity with architectural design and analysis of launch vehicle or space systems.
• Familiarity with trajectory design and optimization.
• Nice to haves but not required:
• Experience working with advanced software development practices such as Docker, Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD), and dependency management.
• Prior work in a startup or agile development environment.
• 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:
• $106,000 - $160,000 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.