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 Space is on a mission to better connect humanity to space and the universe beyond our planet. With decades of experience scaling world-class technology organizations like Google, CEO Eric Schmidt is guiding Relativity into its next phase: advancing Terran R toward launch and building the foundation for long-term impact.
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:
As a Senior Release Engineer on the TRADE team, you’ll own the release lifecycle of integrated vehicle software. You’ll lead the coordination, packaging, validation, and deployment of software across diverse environments, ensuring that each release is stable, tested, and ready for use by partner teams across production, integration, and launch.
This role is deeply cross-functional and highly execution-focused. You’ll need strong technical judgment, attention to detail, and a proactive mindset to manage software releases under evolving requirements and aggressive timelines.
You will:
- Own the end-to-end vehicle software release process, including packaging, versioning, traceability, and readiness reviews.
- Develop automation and scripting (primarily in Python) to streamline release workflows, validation steps, and artifact management.
- Build and maintain tools to validate and publish integrated release candidates from multiple software teams (FSW, ESW, Proxy, tools, etc).
- Coordinate closely with software developers, systems engineers, test operators, and integration teams to align releases with testing and operational needs.
- Lead and execute Run-for-Record campaigns—ensuring environments are prepared, results are captured, and test artifacts are properly reviewed and stored.
- Support post-release deployment to production and test environments; validate successful integration and assist with troubleshooting where needed.
- Improve CI/CD integration and pre-release testing to catch issues earlier and ensure continuous delivery readiness.
- Organize and facilitate data reviews, provide release documentation, and support software audits and anomaly investigations.
About You:
- 4+ years of professional experience with 2+ years in software release engineering, systems integration, test engineering, or a related field.
- Strong Python scripting experience focused on automation, tooling, or test infrastructure.
- Demonstrated ownership of complex software release processes involving multiple teams or components.
- Familiarity with CI/CD workflows, artifact packaging, versioning strategies, and testing pipelines.
- Experience coordinating across disciplines (e.g., software, hardware, operations) to align on software delivery goals.
Nice to haves but not required:
- Experience with software release processes for aerospace systems, launch vehicles, or other high-reliability domains.
- Familiarity with Conda, GitLab CI/CD, version control practices, and artifact repositories.
- Experience working with hardware-in-the-loop (HITL), simulation environments, or large-scale system integration.
- Strong analytical skills and experience supporting data reviews, root cause investigations, or release audits.
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.
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.
Top Skills
Relativity Space Long Beach, California, USA Office
We have two sites in Long Beach, CA's Space Beach: "The Wormhole," a 1M sq. ft. factory, once Boeing C-17's home. Nearby, "The Portal" supports Aeon R engine production for our Terran R launch vehicle.
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