Staff Software Engineer

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.

About the Team: 

The Additive Technology team operates at the frontier of research and development, where creativity meets capability. This is an R&D-driven environment where problems are open-ended and solutions are yours to define. You’ll work alongside welders, robotics engineers, data scientists, and systems engineers at the intersection of hardware and software, creating an end-to-end additive manufacturing platform that serves a wide variety of applications. From exploring new materials to unlocking faster print speeds, to designing complex, organic geometries that can’t be built any other way, it’s high-impact work that sets the foundation for the future of additive manufacturing.

About the Role:

We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer with broad technical skills and a hands-on mindset to support the development and deployment of a state-of-the-art process monitoring software integrated with advanced robotics, machine learning, and welding processes. This role is ideal for someone who thrives in cross-functional environments, enjoys owning full projects from design to deployment, and is comfortable navigating ambiguity in a fast-moving R&D setting. You’ll contribute to the core software infrastructure that connects edge hardware, ML inference systems, real-time process monitoring tools, and visualization platforms. You'll work closely with robotics, data, ML, and infrastructure engineers to develop clean, reliable, and maintainable software that integrates tightly with hardware and real-world processes.
  • Design, implement, and maintain software systems that support process monitoring, anomaly detection, data collection, model inference, and operator interfaces
  • Own and deliver full-cycle software projects that span services, tooling, infrastructure glue, and edge interactions
  • Build APIs and system interfaces to connect data, ML, and robotics subsystems
  • Collaborate cross-functionally with robotics, machine learning, infrastructure, and data engineering teams
  • Troubleshoot and optimize systems running on edge Linux devices and local networks
  • Contribute to internal tooling that improves developer productivity and system observability

About You:

  • 7+ years of professional software engineering experience
  • Strong proficiency in a Linux-based development environment, including CLI tools, shell scripting, and system debugging
  • Experience developing and shipping production-quality software with real-world operational constraints
  • Ability to independently scope, design, and execute technical projects
  • Comfortable working across domains and learning new technologies as needed

Nice to haves but not required:  

  • Experience building software for or with hardware (e.g., instrumentation, industrial equipment, embedded systems)
  • Familiarity with data pipelines, ML model serving, or telemetry collection
  • Exposure to edge computing environments and networked systems
  • Prior experience in a small company or startup where you owned software end-to-end

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:

$194,000 - $249,000 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.

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