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 Propulsion team at Relativity is focused on developing and delivering highly performant and manufacturable engines for Terran R. Engineers are responsible for the entire lifecycle of their parts, from initial design through production to qualification and flight. The team fosters a culture of bottoms-up decision-making, free from technical gatekeeping, where ownership and accountability are key at all levels. But designing engines with a quarter million pounds of thrust is just the beginning. As the flight configuration enters qualification, the team is now exploring modifications for future engines, including thrust upgrades, new cycles, and design for mass production.

About the role:

As a Responsible Engineer in the Combustion Devices team, you'll have cradle-to-grave ownership of an ignition system. This is ownership that covers torch igniters, ignition initiation devices, ignition system fluids design, and integration into the main combustors.

In this role, you'll set igniter operating points, size feed circuits, own the thermal and structural analysis, release drawings, define instrumentation and sequencing for development testing, and run your own hot fires. You'll support the architecture trades for future engines and carry your system through its qualification campaign. This level of end-to-end ownership over combustion hardware is rare in the aerospace industry, where these responsibilities are typically distributed across multiple teams and organizations.

Ignition systems interface with injectors, chambers, GSE, and avionics, requiring coordination across those disciplines and direct accountability for hardware decisions throughout the product lifecycle.

Pyrotechnic ignition background and experience with solid motors, solid propellants, or initiators are relevant and highly welcomed.

About you:

Bachelor's degree in a science or engineering field
2+ years of experience working in the development of propulsion components, combustion components, or energetic hardware
Experience applying engineering fundamentals in fluids, thermodynamics, thermal, and structural analysis
Working knowledge of fluid system sizing and metering, compressible and choked flow, cryogenic fluid flows, and transient behavior during valve sequencing
Demonstrated ownership of hardware through design, build, and test

Nice to haves:

Master's degree in a science or engineering field
Torch igniter, small combustor, or igniter feed system design
Combustion devices experience: injectors, preburners, gas generators, augmenters, or thrust chambers
Solid propulsion background: motor and grain design, solid propellants, pyrotechnic initiators, or energetics handling
Experience in a rocket engine development and/or test environment