Senior Avionics Hardware Engineer, RF
Relativity Space · Long Beach, United States · 8h 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 Avionics team is responsible for the full lifecycle of Terran R’s nervous system, designing, building, testing, installing, and operating the hardware that connects and controls every major electrical system on the vehicle and ground. The team leverages close partnership between avionics design, manufacturing, and test to enable rapid iteration and feedback loops. Engineers are deeply embedded into other functions within Relativity, working closely with propulsion, GNC, fluids, and stage engineering teams to ensure seamless integration and operation. Now is a unique time to join: you’ll get to help shape Terran R's fundamental avionics architecture and be given a high degree of ownership on components that will fly.
About the Role:
In this role you will be responsible for owning the development, test and integration of GPS-based navigation system avionics used within the Terran R launch vehicle. You will work with cross-functional partner teams across the company, conducting architectural trades, developing acceptance and qualification test plans, while being responsible for critical sensory infrastructure allowing for the landing, recovery, and reuse of the vehicle booster stage. Furthermore, you'll help to provide technical guidance across the vehicle's RF architecture - including telemetry downlinks, command uplinks, and antenna system deployment. You'll mentor hardware engineers on RF design fundamentals, review design analyses, and support architectural trades. This cross-system collaboration ensuring that our RF systems work cohesively from design through operations.
About You:
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field
- 5+ years of experience in electronics designed for harsh environments and mission-critical applications such as launch vehicles, spacecraft, aircraft, or robotics
- Experience with hardware bring-up, validation, debugging, and data analysis
- Experience working with highly cross-functional teams (GNC, mechanical, electrical, software, etc.) to develop integrated electronics solutions
- Deep understanding of RF system fundamentals including:
- Impedance matching and transmission line theory
- Link budget analysis and RF propagation effects
- Antenna theory (gain, beamwidth, polarization, radiation patterns)
Nice to haves:
- In-depth knowledge of GNSS receiver systems including PVT calculation, satellite tracking/acquisition, error sources, and RF front-end architecture
- Understanding of RF communication systems including modulation schemes (FSK, PSK, OQPSK, SOQPSK), channel coding, and bit error rate analysis
- Experience in combining data from various navigation sensors (GPS, IMU, magnetometers, altimeters, LiDAR, etc.) to achieve robust and accurate navigation solutions
- Experience with high-speed serial interfaces (SPI, PCIe, Ethernet, etc.); memory interfaces; design for SoCs, microcontrollers, and microprocessors
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.