Senior Flight Software Engineer

Front Door Defense; Long Beach, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 154,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

PTO & sick leave

Parental leave

Learning stipend

Job summary

Relativity Space is seeking a Senior Flight Software Engineer in Long Beach, CA to lead the development of high-reliability flight software for the Terran R vehicle. You’ll architect core software, work with GNC, embedded software, and avionics teams, and mentor junior engineers.

You will focus on meeting system and performance requirements such as latency, jitter, and control frequency, while integrating sensor data (GPS, IMU, radar) and telemetry routing to ground stations.

Qualifications

• Undergraduate or graduate degree in a relevant engineering field and 5+ years production development experience.
• Proficiency in Rust, C++, and/or other system languages with strong CS fundamentals.
• Expertise in Linux OS concepts (memory management, CPU shielding, scheduling).
• Experience with networking concepts including TCP/IP and UDP.
• Familiarity with software development processes: source control, bug tracking, and CI/CD.

Responsibilities

• Architect and deliver core flight software with focus on latency, jitter and control frequency.
• Collaborate with GNC, Embedded Software, and Avionics to integrate sensors and actuators.
• Develop telemetry systems and data routing to ground stations and data centers.
• Mentor junior engineers and define team standards and best practices.
• Support testing infrastructure including HITL and HOOTL.

Skills

Rust

C++

Linux OS concepts

Networking (TCP/IP, UDP)

Algorithms & data structures

CI/CD

Source control

Education

Electrical Engineering

Computer Engineering

Computer Science

Aerospace Engineering

Tools

Git

CI/CD tools

HITL/HOOTL

Job description

Senior Flight Software Engineer

Lead the development of flight software for Terran R to ensure reliable, low-latency operation

About The Role

Senior Flight Software Engineer

Long Beach, California, United States

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 Vehicle Software team develops the safety-critical software that runs on Terran R. The work spans a distributed, real-time control system operating under extreme conditions like Mach 5 atmospheric flight, with a deployment pace that allows you to see your code run on rocket engines daily. The team is building new system architecture from the ground up and just as importantly, testing, releasing, and deploying it. You don't need an aerospace background: what matters is experience with high-reliability software for complex systems. This is a rare opportunity to shape the foundation of Terran R's software stack while directly influencing performance, reliability, and flight success.

About the Role:

Aerospace experience isn't required. We value driven engineers with strong computer science fundamentals who collaborate well to solve meaningful problems. As a Senior Flight Software Engineer, you will be a technical leader within the team with a high level of autonomy tackling core flight software products that directly impact the Terran R program and be responsible for setting standards and best practices for the team along with mentoring junior engineers. Architect and deliver core flight software with a strong focus on meeting system and performance requirements such as latency, allowed jitter, and control frequency. Work closely with GNC engineers to integrate complex algorithms for vehicle ascent and re-entry, descent and landing. Work closely with Embedded Software Engineers and Avionics to integrate vehicle sensor data such as GPS, IMU, Radar, and to control vehicle equipment such as valves, thrust vector controls, and landing grid fins. Develop telemetry system that prioritizes, filters, stores and forwards, and encodes/decodes telemetry to RF format, and routes that data through ground stations and to data centers. Support the development and integration of testing infrastructure such as HITL (Hardware-In-The-Loop) and HOOTL (Hardware-Out-Of-The-Loop) and physics and fluid sims. Focus on maximizing the team's velocity by defining processes, best practices, integrating modern tools and technologies, and mentoring junior engineers.

About You:

• An undergraduate or graduate degree in a relevant engineering discipline (Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering) with 5+ years experience of production development experience
• Experience delivering production-level and high reliability software
• Expert in Rust, C++, and/or other system languages, as well as algorithms and data structures
• Expert in Linux Operating System concepts such as memory management, CPU shielding, scheduling, etc
• Expert in networking concepts such as TCP/IP, UDP
• Experience with software development processes including: source control, bug tracking, and CI/CD

Nice to haves but not required:

• Experience with systems-level programming like synchronization primitives, memory management, etc.
• Experience with different inter-process communication methods
• Experience with message passing protocol such as flatbuffer or protobuf

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!

Hiring Range: $154,000 - $230,000 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.