Lead Radar Engineer, Mars Orbiter

Relativity Space; Long Beach (CA); Hybrid; USD 175,000 - 263,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Generous PTO

Sick leave policy

Parental leave

Learning stipend

Job summary

Relativity Space is seeking a technical lead for a wideband UHF radar sounder on a Mars orbiter mission. You will own the instrument from design through spacecraft integration, calibration, and commissioning, with no hand-off mid-stream.

The role combines hands-on design and leadership across RF, digital, and mechanical domains, collaborating with science partners to meet mission objectives and deliver flight-ready hardware.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of electrical hardware development experience with radios, radar or digital processors.
• Ability to develop and manage radar system performance budgets.
• Experience with analysis and modeling of radar returns and radar performance.
• Experience implementing radio or radar transceivers as software-defined radios.
• Flight testing or spaceflight experience with radio or radar transceivers.
• Deep expertise in signal processing chains in FPGA and/or GPU processing.
• RF circuit design, including power amplifiers, LNAs, and filters.

Responsibilities

• Own the system design for the radar electronics, signal processing chain, and antenna system at the vehicle level for both sounder and radiometer modes, including budgets and SNR analyses.
• Lead waveform trade studies with science partners and implement baseline algorithms.
• Lead hardware development, including prototype development and brass-board validation ahead of flight designs.
• Define the instrument calibration scheme for radar and radiometer modes.
• Coordinate hardware development across RF, digital, power, and mechanical disciplines, plus firmware and software.
• Lead instrument qualification and acceptance testing, integration, and post-flight data review.
• Perform spectrum licensing and frequency coordination for operation and testing.

Skills

Radar hardware

RF design

FPGA/GPU processing

Radar transceivers

Spaceflight experience

Radar signal processing

Antenna design

Tools

RFSoC (AMD/Xilinx)

Job 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.

About The Team

The Interplanetary Sciences Program was established to expand access to scientific exploration across our solar system. Its mission is to make planetary research faster, more affordable, and more capable than ever before by rethinking how science missions are designed, built, and operated. The program aims to enable scientists to send instruments to distant worlds without decades of development or prohibitive costs. By creating a sustainable model for interplanetary exploration, we are transforming space science from an occasional event into a continuous process of discovery that accelerates knowledge, broadens participation, and inspires the next generation of explorers.

About The Role

You'll be the technical lead and responsible engineer for a wideband UHF shallow radar sounder for a Mars orbiter mission, owning the instrument from design through spacecraft integration, calibration, and commissioning, with no hand-off to another team mid-stream.

The instrument operates in two modes: a sounder mode that measures subsurface layer reflections and a radiometer mode that measures the temperature of subsurface layers over a wide footprint.

This is a hybrid role: you will personally execute significant portions of the design and analysis while providing technical leadership, working closely with our science partners as their primary engineering counterpart. You will co-design the instrument against science objectives and develop the flight hardware and processing implementations.

• Own the system design for the radar electronics, signal processing chain, and antenna system at the vehicle level for both sounder and radiometer modes, including instrument performance, power, and mass budgets, link budgets, and SNR/penetration-depth analyses
• Lead waveform trade studies in collaboration with the science partners, implement the waveforms and baseline algorithms they develop, and co-design with the science team to ensure the instrument meets science adequacy and mission science objectives
• Lead the hardware development, including prototype development and validation at the brass board level ahead of flight designs
• Define the instrument calibration scheme for both radar and radiometer modes
• Coordinate hardware development across RF, digital, power, and mechanical disciplines, along with firmware and software development
• Lead instrument qualification and acceptance testing, integration into the spacecraft, and terrestrial analog flight testing, including test integration and post-flight data review
• Perform spectrum licensing and frequency coordination for instrument operation and testing and support instrument calibration and on-orbit commissioning

About You

• 7+ years of experience in electrical hardware development, such as software defined radios, radar transceivers, or sophisticated digital processors
• Demonstrated ability to develop and manage radar system performance budgets
• Experience with analysis and modeling of radar returns and radar performance
• Experience implementing radio or radar transceivers as software-defined radios
• Field testing, flight testing, or spaceflight experience with radio or radar transceivers
• Deep expertise in one or more of the following:
• Implementation of signal processing chains in FPGA and/or GPU processing
• Design of mixed-signal and digital PCBs, such as software-defined radios or board-level FPGA designs
• RF circuit design, including power amplifiers, low-noise amplifiers, and filters
• Antenna design and verification

Nice To Haves But Not Required

• Experience with microwave radiometry or radiometer instrument design
• Familiarity with planetary or terrestrial radars (e.g., SHARAD, MARSIS, RIMFAX, ice-penetrating radar)
• Hands-on experience with AMD/Xilinx RFSoC or Zynq UltraScale+ platforms
• Experience with spectrum licensing and frequency coordination for experimental or space systems
• Experience with polarimetric radar and full-polarimetry calibration
• Experience taking RF payloads through PDR/CDR, qualification, and spacecraft integration

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

$175,000-$263,000 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 [e-mail].