Lead Software 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 Vehicle Software team develops the safety-critical software that runs on Terran R. The work spans a distributed, real-time control system operating under extreme conditions like Mach 5 atmospheric flight, with a deployment pace that allows you to see your code run on rocket engines daily. The team is building new system architecture from the ground up and just as importantly, testing, releasing, and deploying it. You don’t need an aerospace background: what matters is experience with high-reliability software for complex systems. This is a rare opportunity to shape the foundation of Terran R’s software stack while directly influencing performance, reliability, and flight success.

About the Role:

As the Lead Engineer for our vehicle configuration system, you will be the primary architect and steward of the data that defines our flight hardware. You will lead a high-impact team to aggregate disparate data streams from across the company into a single, high-integrity relational source of truth. Your work ensures that every department—from propulsion to avionics—is operating from the same validated configuration.

What You’ll Do:

• Work with engineering and operations teams across the company to understand the structure of their configuration data and how it integrates into the vehicle. You will become a subject matter expert in how manufacturing, propulsion, avionics, GNC, and networking data enables Terran R to fly

• Build and optimize pipelines to ingest, clean, and normalize complex configuration data from multiple departmental silos

• Lead the development of high-performance REST APIs using Python and FastAPI to expose this data to the rest of the organization

• Guide the development of lightweight web interfaces and Jamstack frontends that allow non-technical stakeholders to explore and audit data

• Partner with test and systems engineering teams to rapidly generate updated configurations for validation and deployment. Change is the only constant; configurations will evolve right up to the hours before launch

About You:

• 6+ years of professional software development experience with a mastery of Python and modern asynchronous frameworks like FastAPI, utilizing Pydantic or JSON Schema for rigorous data modeling

• Expertise in relational database design, including a proven ability to manage complex schemas and model intricate dependencies without sacrificing performance

• A track record of building mission-critical RESTful APIs that serve as a high-integrity, scalable source of truth for diverse consumers

• 1+ years of experience leading or mentoring engineering teams, including managing sprints and conducting high-standard design and code reviews

• Experience thriving in high-velocity environments where data changes rapidly, maintaining composure and data integrity even under the pressure of tight mission deadlines

Nice to haves but not required:

• Domain expertise in aerospace or complex manufacturing, particularly working with PLM systems or configuration management for complex electromechanical systems (e.g., automotive, defense, or industrial automation)

• Experience with modern full-stack web development, specifically using Jamstack architectures to build responsive internal data exploration tools

• Familiarity with modern DevOps practices, including Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD, to ensure configuration systems remain highly available during critical launch windows

• Strong systems engineering aptitude, with the ability to translate physical hardware constraints into logical, rigorous data models

• A demonstrated ability to act as a cross-functional "bridge," translating the specific technical jargon of various engineering silos into a unified, functional system

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.

Hiring Range:
$157,000—$215,000 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 [email protected].