Senior FPGA Engineer

Relativity Space; Long Beach (CA); On-site; USD 148,000 - 222,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary and equity

Generous PTO and sick leave

Parental leave

Annual learning & development stipend

Job summary

Relativity Space in Long Beach, California, is hiring an FPGA engineer for the Avionics team. You will analyze, design, and test custom FPGA firmware for the Terran R launch vehicle, overseeing FPGA development across the lifecycle from concept to flight readiness.

The role requires a Bachelor's in Electrical or Computer Engineering and 5+ years in FPGA development for mission-critical systems; you will collaborate with mechanical, thermal, electrical, and software teams to deliver reliable

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical or Computer Engineering.
• 5+ years in FPGA development for mission-critical systems.
• Experience with RTL design, verification, synthesis, timing, and bring‑up.
• HDL experience: VHDL, Verilog, or SystemVerilog.
• Ability to collaborate with mechanical, thermal, electrical, and software teams.
• Experience with cross-functional teams and various FPGA toolchains.

Responsibilities

• Analyze, design, and test custom FPGA firmware for Terran R.
• Oversee FPGA development across product lifecycles from concept to flight readiness.
• Coordinate with cross-functional teams to ensure reliable hardware on schedule.
• Drive technical ownership of avionics FPGA components.

Skills

FPGA development

High-speed digital systems

RTL design

HDL (VHDL/Verilog/SystemVerilog)

Cross-functional teamwork

Project management

Data analysis

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical or Computer Engineering

Tools

Xilinx Vivado

Intel FPGA tools

SystemVerilog/Verilog/VHDL toolchain

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 Avionics team is responsible for the full lifecycle of Terran R’s nervous system, designing, building, testing, installing, and operating the hardware that connects and controls every major electrical system on the vehicle and ground. The team leverages close partnership between avionics design, manufacturing, and test to enable rapid iteration and feedback loops. Engineers are deeply embedded into other functions within Relativity, working closely with propulsion, GNC, fluids, and stage engineering teams to ensure seamless integration and operation. Now is a unique time to join: you’ll get to help shape Terran R's fundamental avionics architecture and be given a high degree of ownership on components that will fly.

About The Role

As an FPGA engineer on the digital electronics team, you will analyze, design, and test custom FPGA firmware on the Terran R launch vehicle. You will oversee development for FPGAs across multiple products through the entire product lifecycle from concept to flight maturity to include initial design, board bring‑up, design verification, qualification, initial flight production, integration, and vehicle operations. You will work with cross-functional partner teams across the company to help the team make the best possible decisions for the overall vehicle. A strong candidate for the role will have a deep technical background in electronics design and sound project management skills to ensure the hardware project is both reliable and on‑schedule to support Terran R's launch!

About You

• Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field
• 5+ years of experience in FPGA development and high‑speed digital systems in mission‑critical applications such as launch vehicles, spacecraft, aircraft, or robotics
• Technical expertise in FPGA development across the full‑lifecycle from RTL design, verification, synthesis, timing analysis, and bring up/validation
• Familiarity with one or more Hardware Description Languages (HDLs) including VHDL, Verilog, or SystemVerilog
• Experience with hardware bring‑up, validation, debugging, and data analysis
• Experience working with highly cross‑functional teams (mechanical, thermal, electrical, software, etc.) to develop integrated electronics solutions
• Familiarity with a wide variety of FPGA toolchains and SoC platforms across industry leaders like AMD Xilinx, Intel, Microchip, etc.

Nice To Haves But Not Required

• Strong experience in DSP concepts in RF applications such as forward error correction, channel estimation, front end theory, and modulation schemes
• Familiarity with one or more code generation or High Level Synthesis (HLS) languages including SpinalHDL, Chisel, Vitis, SystemC, or Simulink
• Familiarity with RISC-V development toolchain (e.g. linker scripts, compilers)
• Familiarity with rigorous software development processes including version and configuration control, change traceability, code coverage analysis, CI/CD build pipelines, etc.

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

$148,000—$222,000 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].