Sr Aerothermal 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:

Relativity’s Integrated Performance teams ensure that our products work across all systems and disciplines, from trajectory design to aerodynamics to reliability analysis and beyond. Our groups size the Terran R rocket, design its missions for customer success, reliability, and reusability, and ensure that every system on the rocket and ground is engineered correctly for the demanding environments of launch and entry. Recently, we completed the preliminary design and analysis of Terran R including Relativity’s first-ever work on launch vehicle reusability, spanning advanced trajectory simulations, wind tunnel testing, and structures analysis, among many other projects.

About the Role:

• Develop and execute computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses to solve novel challenges in vehicle entry heating and supersonic retropropulsion

• Drive the design of major Terran R system elements – like fins, flaps, heat shields, and primary structure – to meet criteria for temperature and heating

• Guide and mentor responsible hardware engineers to ensure hardware meets aerothermal requirements

• Scope and develop aerothermal databases for ascent and entry, including uncertainty quantification, from multiple sources like CFD, empirical methods, and wind tunnel testing

• Size thermal protection systems (TPS) for flight

• Support re-usable TPS material development and testing

• Mature Relativity’s tools for developing and communicating aerothermal data, including custom and commercial code, databases, and data processing tools

To be successful in this role, you should be self-motivated, adaptable, and able to contribute significantly to a fast-paced, integrated vehicle program. You should also be able to resolve ambiguity and drive projects to completion. Ideally, you have significant compressible flow, CFD, thermal analysis, and conjugate heat transfer experience as well as a proven track record completing projects successfully in a highly collaborative environment.

On a weekly basis, you will be performing analysis, developing software tools, and supporting design teams. You will also use your strong organizational skills to properly manage the documentation and communication of your actions, recommendations, and decisions.

About You:

• Undergraduate degree in engineering or related field

• 5+ years relevant experience

• Demonstrated proficiency in compressible flow and thermal analysis, preferably on entry vehicles

• Experience architecting and executing CFD workflows for external flow, preferably including engine plume simulation

• Experience solving cross-disciplinary design problems on integrated vehicles

• Proficiency in Python and industry-standard CFD tools like FUN3D and Star-CCM+, including use of HPC clusters

Nice to Haves, but Not Required:

• Graduate degree in engineering or related field

• 10+ years relevant experience across 2 or more program lifecycles

• Experience with thermal protection system sizing & analysis using standard tools like FIAT, CHAR, MINIVER, or LAURA

• Experience with aerothermal instrumentation, wind tunnel and flight testing, validation and verification

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:
$142,000—$181,500 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].