Staff Electrical Engineer

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

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Equity

Generous PTO and sick leave policy

Parental leave

Annual learning and development stipend

Job summary

Relativity Space is seeking a Staff Electrical Engineer in Long Beach, California to lead the design and development of advanced spacecraft electronics for deep space missions. You will collaborate closely with science and software teams to ensure systems operate effectively, balancing high-performance capabilities with engineering constraints.

Your role involves rapid prototyping, testing, and integration to create innovative solutions for interplanetary exploration. This position offers competitive salary, equity, generous PTO, and a collaborative working environment.

Qualifications

• 7+ years designing and delivering high performance digital electronics.
• Proven experience leading design, bringup, and validation of sophisticated board level electronics.
• Hands-on work with challenging thermal and electromechanical environments.

Responsibilities

• Design and build high performance spacecraft electronics.
• Maximize capability while balancing technical constraints.
• Iterate with the software team to ensure system elements operate as intended.

Skills

Designing high performance digital electronics

Technical communication

Problem-solving

Cross-disciplinary collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering or Physics

Tools

Board level electronics design

Thermal and electromechanical environments

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:

As the Staff Electrical Engineer within the Interplanetary Sciences Program, you will own the next generation of deep space compute and storage capability by leveraging the latest terrestrial technologies and challenging the status quo of onboard compute and storage to other planets.

You will be responsible for designing, building, and qualifying high performance spacecraft electronics within the span of compute modules, network switches, storage nodes, and communications terminals. You will work closely with the science team to maximize capability by balancing the capability (CPU, GPU, storage capacity, network bandwidth) with the technical constraints of the flight spacecraft (power, thermal, EMI, mechanical, reliability, etc.). This role will also work closely in conjunction with the software team to bring up the core software infrastructure both on the spacecraft and on the ground side, and iterating with the software team to ensure the full system elements operate as intended in all environments.

This role will be a high responsibility, high autonomy, and high accountability role within a fast‑paced, iterative environment, where rapid prototyping, early testing, and continuous learning are key to success. You’ll lead hands‑on development campaigns to evaluate key technologies, derisk interfaces, and validate performance before full system integration. You’ll also work across internal and external teams to turn concepts into hardware, balancing agility and rigor as you move quickly from analysis to prototypes to flight‑ready systems.

About You:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Physics, or a related technical field or equivalent experience.
• 7+ years designing and delivering high performance digital electronics.
• Proven experience leading design, bringup, and validation of sophisticated board level electronics.
• Hands‑on work with challenging thermal and electromechanical environments.
• Excellent technical communication, problem‑solving, and cross‑disciplinary collaboration skills.

Nice to haves but not required:

• Direct architecture or EE design experience with non‑volatile storage, mobile compute, and/or server class computing is a plus.
• Experience designing power supplies for digital electronics, such as multi rail converters with strict sequencing requirements.
• Experience with compute and storage survivability in space and radiation environments is a plus.
• Strong grasp of practical systems integration and risk management in a development program.

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 and 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].