Materials & Processes Engineer, Turbomachinery

Long Beach, California

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.

The Materials and NDE (Non-Destructive Evaluation) team plays a central role in enabling Terran R to fly, re‑fly, and scale: developing, characterizing, and inspecting materials and processes across all parts of the vehicle. From welding and additive manufacturing to advanced composites, the team works at the intersection of innovation and execution, balancing performance and reliability with cost, quality, and schedule. As we move toward first flight and beyond, the challenges become more exciting, offering opportunities to shape how we design and develop for re‑use.

With ownership across products, systems, and disciplines, engineers gain broad exposure and drive key decisions across design, manufacturing, and operations.

• Be the M&P owner of reusable Liquid Propulsion Turbo machinery Products, Materials Systems, and Disciplines
• Qualify turbo machinery materials and products for flight + reuse
• Develop, implement, and maintain technical specifications and engineering standards
• Drive statistically-driven experimental design and process improvement campaigns
• Interface with:
• Materials engineering staff to identify, define, and fill critical turbo machinery technology gaps
• Laboratory staff to characterize materials and processes
• Design Engineers for product materials selection, allowables development, analysis, qualification, flight, and reuse
• Manufacturing Engineers to reduce cost + rate while maintaining needed performance for turbo machinery products
• Quality assurance to facilitate specification compliance validation
• Propulsion Engineers to perform failure analysis, root cause and corrective action campaigns when turbo machinery parts fail in service
• Relativity + Customer Fracture Control Boards to achieve vehicle reuse
• Company Leadership to elevate risks and power through roadblocks

• Bachelor’s degree in materials science or engineering, or related field
• 7+ years of relevant turbo machinery materials experience
• Leveling is flexible and will be adjusted for candidates with more experience
• Experience with general propulsion hardware M&P activities, such as material selection, qualification, damage tolerance, inspections, risk assessments, and failure analysis
• Experience performing material and part qualifications for either AM laser powder bed fusion systems or traditional material forming (wrought, forgings, castings)
• A core commitment to accountability, collaboration, and execution
• A desire to establish and foster strong interdisciplinary relationships across the company
• An authentic, introspective, and inclusive mindset towards technical, interpersonal, team growth, and development
• Passion to work in a fast‑paced and challenging environment on constantly iterating turbo machinery products + processes, driving big impact on critical program needs as we ramp manufacturing rate + achieve reuse