High Performance Compute Responsible Engineer
Relativity Space · Long Beach, United States · 3mo ago
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 own the compute hardware from architecture through bring up — there's no hand-off to another team mid-stream. You pick the components, you design the board, you're the one powering it on and debugging it with the software team
- Design the compute boards that deliver ≥10 TFLOPS of processing power for onboard AI/ML inference and science data processing within the Relay Data Center, owning the hardware from schematic capture through board-level validation
- Architect and implement power delivery networks for high-complexity carrier boards, including 500W+ multi-rail designs with tight sequencing integrating GPU or CPU compute modules onto custom PCBs with high-speed coherent interconnects
- Define thermal interface requirements (power dissipation budgets, junction temperature limits, interface material selection) and hand off specifications to the mechanical team, who own the thermal and packaging solution
- Design and validate high-speed memory interfaces (HBM, DDR5), PCIe Gen 4/5 chip-to-chip links, and 10 GbE+ Ethernet connections to the payload network, along with board-level power monitoring, current limiting, and radiation upset recovery circuitry
- Lead hardware bringup and board-level validation. Diagnose and resolve issues hands-on while collaborating closely with the software engineers who are building the software environment on top of your hardware
About You:
- BSEE with 5+ years designing and bringing up high-speed digital compute boards, ideally with direct exposure to GPU, HPC, or modern accelerator platforms
- Proficient in high-speed digital PCB design principles: multi-GHz signaling, dense BGA escape routing on high layer count stackups, and signal integrity analysis through both simulation and measurement
- Strong command of power integrity and power delivery network design, including multi-rail architectures, power management IC selection, voltage sequencing, and board-level current limiting
- Strong working experience with high-speed serial interface design, analysis and debug, particularly PCIe Gen 4/5 topology, configuration, and Ethernet
Nice to haves but not required:
- Experience writing basic firmware for hardware bring up and validation
- Hands-on embedded systems debug skills that let you move between careful pre-fab analysis and fast, practical problem-solving on the bench
- Experience with COTS hardware for space applications, including radiation awareness, component derating, and upset mitigation techniques (ECC memory scrubbing, watchdog/reset architectures)
- Hands-on experience with physical PCB layout, particularly for complex, high-layer-count boards with dense BGA packages
- Familiarity with thermal management at the board and system level, including junction temperature modeling, thermal interface material selection, and collaborating with mechanical engineers on packaging solutions for high-TDP modules
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.
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 accommodations@relativityspace.com.
Please note: Relativity Space does not accept unsolicited resumes, candidate profiles, or referrals from recruitment agencies or search firms. Any unsolicited submission - via email, our website, social media, or directly to an employee - will be deemed the property of Relativity Space, and no fee will be owed absent a current, fully executed agreement with Talent Acquisition that specifically authorizes submissions for the applicable role.