Staff Radar Engineer, Mars Orbiter

Relativity; Long Beach (CA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Relativity Space seeks a technical lead for a wideband UHF radar sounder on a Mars orbiter mission, owning the instrument from design to spacecraft integration. You will lead the radar system, jointly design with science partners, and drive calibration, testing, and qualification.

You will work across RF, digital, power, and mechanical domains, coordinating with partners and providing technical leadership while ensuring the instrument meets mission objectives and science goals.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in electrical hardware development (radar/SDR).
• Ability to develop and manage radar system performance budgets.
• Experience modeling radar returns and performance.
• Experience implementing SDR/RADAR transceivers.
• Field/flight/spaceflight testing experience with radar systems.
• Expertise in FPGA/GPU signal processing, PCB design, RF circuits.

Responsibilities

• Own the system design for radar electronics, signal processing, and antenna at vehicle level, including budgets, link budgets, and SNR analyses.
• Lead waveform studies and implement baseline algorithms with science partners.
• Lead hardware development and validation before flight.
• Define instrument calibration schemes for radar and radiometer modes.
• Coordinate RF, digital, power, mechanical, firmware/software across teams.
• Lead instrument qualification, spacecraft integration, and terrestrial testing; review post-flight data.
• Perform spectrum licensing and frequency coordination; assist on-orbit commissioning.

Skills

Radar systems

Software defined radio

FPGA processing

RF circuit design

Antenna design

Signal processing

PCB design

Tools

FPGA design tools

GPU processing

RF test equipment

PCB design tools

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:

You’ll be the technical lead and responsible engineer for a wideband UHF shallow radar sounder for a Mars orbiter mission, owning the instrument from design through spacecraft integration, calibration, and commissioning, with no hand-off to another team mid-stream.

The instrument operates in two modes: a sounder mode that measures subsurface layer reflections and a radiometer mode that measures the temperature of subsurface layers over a wide footprint.

This is a hybrid role: you will personally execute significant portions of the design and analysis while providing technical leadership, working closely with our science partners as their primary engineering counterpart. You will co-design the instrument against science objectives and develop the flight hardware and processing implementations.

• Own the system design for the radar electronics, signal processing chain, and antenna system at the vehicle level for both sounder and radiometer modes, including instrument performance, power, and mass budgets, link budgets, and SNR/penetration-depth analyses
• Lead waveform trade studies in collaboration with the science partners, implement the waveforms and baseline algorithms they develop, and co-design with the science team to ensure the instrument meets science adequacy and mission science objectives
• Lead the hardware development, including prototype development and validation at the brass board level ahead of flight designs
• Define the instrument calibration scheme for both radar and radiometer modes
• Coordinate hardware development across RF, digital, power, and mechanical disciplines, along with firmware and software development
• Lead instrument qualification and acceptance testing, integration into the spacecraft, and terrestrial analog flight testing, including test integration and post-flight data review
• Perform spectrum licensing and frequency coordination for instrument operation and testing and support instrument calibration and on-orbit commissioning

About You:

7+ years of experience in electrical hardware development, such as software defined radios, radar transceivers, or sophisticated digital processors

Demonstrated ability to develop and manage radar system performance budgets

Experience with analysis and modeling of radar returns and radar performance

Experience implementing radio or radar transceivers as software-defined radios

Field testing, flight testing, or spaceflight experience with radio or radar transceivers

Deep expertise in one or more of the following:

• Implementation of signal processing chains in FPGA and/or GPU processing
• Design of mixed-signal and digital PCBs, such as software-defined radios or board-level FPGA designs
• RF circuit design, including power amplifiers, low-noise amplifiers, and filters
• Antenna design and verification

Nice to haves but not required:

• Experience with microwave radiometry or radiometer instrument design
• Familiarity with planetary or terrestrial radars (e.g., SHARAD, MARSIS, RIMFAX, ice-pen