Mission-Critical Software Engineer, Operations

Relativity Space; Long Beach (CA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 196,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary and equity

PTO and sick leave policy

Parental leave

Learning and development stipend

Job summary

Relativity Space is building the Interplanetary Sciences Program and an operations software stack to command, monitor, and coordinate the Mars 2028 mission. The software will enable autonomous science collection and interface with instruments across partners.

As a Software Engineer – Operations, you will own design and implementation of spacecraft commanding tools, telemetry processing, and data pipelines, with shift work during critical mission phases and opportunities to influence the

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related field.
• 3+ years of software engineering experience, ideally including mission operations, ground systems, or safety-critical software.
• Strong software fundamentals and Python proficiency.
• Experience designing automated test suites for complex or safety-critical systems.
• Experience defining external-facing interfaces or APIs (ICDs, schemas, protocols).
• Comfort working cross-functionally with engineers, operators, and external partners.
• Experience with agentic development tools as part of a professional workflow.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement operations software for spacecraft commanding tools.
• Collaborate with mission ops, GN&C, flight software, instrument teams, and external partners to translate needs into working software.
• Build automated test suites and validation frameworks for telemetry and data, including regression tests and hardware-in-the-loop support.
• Define and document interfaces (ICDs, APIs, data formats) shared with instrument teams and others.
• Automate tooling for commanding, telemetry visualization, anomaly investigation, and data pipelines.

Skills

Python

Software engineering

Automation testing

APIs/ICDs

Agentic development tools

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related field

Job description

Relativity Space is building the Interplanetary Sciences Program and an operations software stack to command, monitor, and coordinate the Mars 2028 mission. The software will enable autonomous science collection and interface with instruments across partners.

As a Software Engineer – Operations, you will own design and implementation of spacecraft commanding tools, telemetry processing, and data pipelines, with shift work during critical mission phases and opportunities to influence the