Senior Software Engineer, Embedded

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 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:

  • Design, implement, and maintain embedded software in C++ for microcontrollers in rocket systems 
  • Develop software on Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS) 
  • Integrate with low-level hardware interfaces: SPI, I2C, UART, GPIO, interrupts, etc. 
  • Implement communication protocols such as UDP, multicast, Ethernet 
  • Write clean, efficient, and testable code for real-time and safety-critical applications 
  • Collaborate with hardware, systems, and test engineers to support full product development lifecycle 
  • Participate in code reviews, system design discussions, and debugging sessions 
  • Contribute to continuous improvement of our embedded software architecture and tools 

About You:

  • Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related field 
  • 4+ years of experience developing embedded software with C or C++ 
  • Experience with RTOS environments (FreeRTOS, ThreadX, VxWorks, or equivalent) 
  • Solid understanding of microcontroller architectures and peripheral interfaces 
  • Strong debugging and optimization skills for embedded systems 
  • Comfortable working with hardware schematics, and test equipment (logic analyzers, power supplies, oscilloscopes  
  • Experience with Git, CI/CD pipelines, and modern software development practices 

Nice to haves but not required:  

  • Experience with space-rated systems or launch vehicles 
  • Familiarity with Python or scripting tools for automation and testing 
  • Proficiency with networking protocols such as UDP, Ethernet, and multicast 
  • Experience developing motor control software for brushless motors including FOC (Field-Oriented Control)  
  • Understanding of control theory, especially PID tuning in embedded environments 

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:

$165,000 - $211,000 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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