Staff Loads & Dynamics Engineer

About the role

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 Loads & Dynamics team works collaboratively with adjacent Flight Sciences teams including Dynamic Environments and Aerodynamics and across the Structures, Mechanisms, Fluids, GNCP, Launch and Test teams to develop robust vehicle, ground system, and component architectures, generate associated loads, maintain and improve related analysis tools, provide design and test guidance, and contribute to performance trades on time and budget while meeting our technical requirements. A high degree of autonomy along with an ability to prioritize work in our fast-paced environment is required.

About the Role:

Drive maturation of hardware designs and ops decisions through analysis, understanding of vehicle and program needs, and proactive communication across teams

Lead development, execution, delivery, and validation efforts for relevant Dynamic analyses such as Coupled Loads Analysis or Vibroacoustic Analysis, including tooling and automation

Develop Dynamic loads, levels, and criteria from initial concept through data review for vehicle and supporting hardware for Terran R

Contribute to and execute roadmaps for engineering analysis, testing, and tool development in collaboration with management

Drive the design of Terran R system elements and operations to meet Loads and Dynamics criteria and to identify opportunities to improve performance, reliability, robustness, or simplicity

Mentor other analysts to be hardware-focused, collaborative, and judicious with technical rigor

About You:

Undergraduate degree in engineering or related field and 7+ years relevant experience

Experience structuring, negotiating, executing, and delivering complex analysis projects to hardware teams and certification authorities

Experience with Finite Element and/or other modeling approaches for dynamic response analysis

Experience developing Dynamics analysis tools/workflows

Experience with relevant testing, instrumentation, and data analysis

Nice to haves but not required:

Experience leading technical teams, including hiring and performance management

Experience leading anomaly resolutions/failure investigations

Experience in a Dynamics role from concept through V&V/certification on a vehicle program

Working knowledge of liquid rocket engines, fluid dynamics, aerodynamics, structural mechanics

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:
$164,000 $246,000 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.

If you need a reasonable accommodation, please contact us at accommodations@relativityspace.com .

Please note: Relativity Space does not accept unsolicited resumes, candidate profiles, or referrals from recruitment agencies or search firms. Any unsolicited submission - via email, our website, social media, or directly to an employee - will be deemed the property of Relativity Space, and no fee will be owed absent a current, fully executed agreement with Talent Acquisition that specifically authorizes submissions for the applicable role.