Thermal Engineer I (Long Beach)

At Relativity Space, we're building rockets to serve today's needs and tomorrow's breakthroughs. The Terran R vehicle will deliver customer payloads to orbit, meeting growing demand for launch capacity. Commercial success with Terran R will open new opportunities to advance science, exploration, and innovation.

Joining Relativity means becoming part of something where autonomy, ownership, and impact exist at every level. You will solve problems that have not been solved before, helping develop a rocket, a factory, and a business from the ground up. Whether you work in propulsion, manufacturing, software, avionics, or a corporate function, you will collaborate across teams and see your work come to life quickly.

About the Team

Relativity's Integrated Performance teams ensure that products work across all systems and disciplines, from trajectory design to aerodynamics to reliability analysis. They size the Terran R rocket, design its missions for customer success, reliability, and reusability, and make sure every system on the rocket and ground is engineered for the demanding environments of launch and entry. The team recently completed the preliminary design and analysis of Terran R, including Relativity's first work on launch vehicle reusability.

The Thermal team predicts temperatures, designs thermal architectures, and guides designs for the structures, fluids, components, and avionics of launch vehicles. The team draws on thermodynamics and all methods of heat transfer across ground and flight phases, using hand calculations, reduced order modeling, and coupled detailed thermal modeling.

About the Role

• Drive the architecture, sizing, and development of thermal systems such as insulation, heaters, thermal protection, and environmental conditioning with peer technical teams.
• Build, execute, and validate thermal analyses at the component, sub-system, and vehicle level, including supporting tool development and automation.
• Guide design and development engineers in applying thermal sciences to meet system and component requirements.
• Develop and execute tests supporting thermal systems development and qualification, including test article integration, instrumentation setup, and data processing.
• Support vehicle and engine thermal system development, stage testing, and flight operations.

About You

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering or a related field.
• Experience in industry through internships or university collaborations.
• Strong fundamentals in heat transfer and thermal analysis.
• Hands-on experience writing test plans and performing testing, instrumentation, and data analysis at the component and system level.
• Experience with an engineering scripting language such as MATLAB or Python.

Nice to Haves

• Graduate degree in engineering or a related field.
• Experience solving complex problems on integrated vehicles with design teams.
• Experience in component and system level thermal and fluids analysis using toolsets such as Sinda/Fluint/Thermal Desktop or other commercial FEM/FDM/FVM solvers.
• Familiarity with cryogenic liquid rocket stage architecture, engine architecture, and operations.
• Understanding of aerodynamics and external flight heating, including thermal protection system materials and sizing.

Relativity Space is committed to transparency and fairness in compensation. Actual pay is determined by experience, qualifications, and other job-related factors. Benefits include competitive salary and equity, generous PTO and sick leave, parental leave, and an annual learning and development stipend.

Relativity Space is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

To request a reasonable accommodation, contact [email protected].

Relativity Space does not accept unsolicited resumes, candidate profiles, or referrals from recruitment agencies or search firms.