Senior FPGA Engineer — Space DSP/SDR Systems

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

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Generous PTO

Sick leave

Parental leave

Learning and development stipend

Job summary

Relativity Space is seeking an FPGA engineer to design, test, and maintain custom FPGA firmware for Terran R’s avionics systems. You’ll own RTL/verification across the lifecycle, collaborating with propulsion, GNC, and stage engineering to ensure timely, reliable hardware.

You’ll bring deep electronics expertise, project management discipline, and a passion for rapid iteration, enabling a high-assurance flight-ready product.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
• 5+ years of experience in FPGA development with a meaningful portion in DSP/SDR applications for mission-critical systems such as launch vehicles, spacecraft, aircraft, or robotics
• Strong grounding in digital communications theory: modulation schemes, matched filtering, synchronization, equalization, and forward error correction
• Proficiency in DSP fundamentals: multirate signal processing, filter design, FFT-based processing, and fixed-point quantization analysis
• Technical expertise in FPGA development across the full lifecycle — RTL design, verification, synthesis, timing analysis, and bring-up/validation — with algorithms implemented in VHDL, Verilog, or SystemVerilog
• Familiarity with one or more code generation or High Level Synthesis (HLS) languages including SpinalHDL, Chisel, Vitis, SystemC, or Simulink
• Experience with high-speed data converter interfaces (JESD204B/C or similar) feeding DSP pipelines
• Experience with hardware bring-up, validation, debugging, and data analysis
• Familiarity with a wide variety of FPGA toolchains and SoC platforms across industry leaders like AMD Xilinx, Intel, Microchip, etc.

Responsibilities

• Analyze, design, and test custom FPGA firmware on the Terran R launch vehicle.
• Oversee development for FPGAs across multiple products through the entire product lifecycle from concept to flight maturity.
• Work with cross-functional partner teams to help the team make the best possible decisions for the overall vehicle.
• A strong candidate will have a deep technical background in electronics design and solid project management skills to keep hardware on-schedule.

Skills

FPGA development

DSP/SDR

Digital communications theory

DSP fundamentals

RTL design and verification

VHDL/Verilog/SystemVerilog

SpinalHDL/HLS

JESD204

Hardware bring-up

FPGA toolchains

Education

Bachelors in Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering

Tools

SpinalHDL

Chisel

Vitis

SystemC

Simulink

MATLAB

Job description

Relativity Space is seeking an FPGA engineer to design, test, and maintain custom FPGA firmware for Terran R’s avionics systems. You’ll own RTL/verification across the lifecycle, collaborating with propulsion, GNC, and stage engineering to ensure timely, reliable hardware.

You’ll bring deep electronics expertise, project management discipline, and a passion for rapid iteration, enabling a high-assurance flight-ready product.