Staff Communications Payload Lead Engineer

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 Lead Engineer for the Communications Payload within the Interplanetary Sciences Program, you will own the architecture, design, development, testing, and delivery of a complex system that delivers next generation communication and compute capability.

You will be responsible for creating an architecture that meets the functional capability needs while closing all other technical constraints (structural, thermal, power, EMI, etc…). You will be working closely with and technically leading a small team of subject matter experts and responsible engineers on communication systems, high-capability compute, power, and thermal to deliver a fully working system in support of an upcoming science & exploration mission.

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, Aerospace Engineering, Physics or a related technical field
• 10+ years of experience in design and delivery of complex electrical systems, ideally with direct hands-on leadership in RF and/or compute heavy projects
• Prior experience in full lifecycle of architecture through delivery of a complex multi-disciplinary system
• Core technical expertise in architecture or detailed design of electrical systems
• Familiarity with core principles of systems engineering and interface management for complex problems
• Familiarity with core principles of risk management for complex problems
• Excellent technical communication and problem-solving skills

Nice to haves but not required:  

• Experience with RF-based terrestrial or deep space communication system design, including link budgets, ground station compatibility, radio/antenna design, and final integration & testing is a plus
• Experience with terrestrial compute and storage systems is a plus
• Experience with compute and storage survivability in space and radiation environments is a plus
• Experience with NASA aerospace systems engin