Staff Software Engineer, Flight Software Job at ZipRecruiter in Long Beach

Job Description 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. 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 a company where autonomy, ownership, and impact exist at every level. Here, you're not just executing tasks; you're solving unprecedented problems, 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 quickly. Relativity is a place where creativity and technical rigor go hand in hand, and your voice will help define our shared story. Now is a unique moment to leave your mark on the product, the process, and the culture, with Terran R gaining momentum. The most meaningful work of your career awaits. Join us. About the Team: The Vehicle Software team develops the safety-critical software for Terran R. The work involves a distributed, real-time control system operating under extreme conditions like Mach 5 atmospheric flight, with a deployment pace that allows daily testing on rocket engines. The team is building new system architecture from scratch, including testing, releasing, and deploying it. Experience with high-reliability software for complex systems is valued; aerospace background is not required. This is a rare opportunity to shape the foundation of Terran R's software stack and influence performance, reliability, and flight success. About the Role: Aerospace experience isn't required. We seek driven engineers with strong computer science fundamentals who collaborate well to solve meaningful problems. As a Staff Flight Software Engineer, you will be a technical leader with a high level of autonomy, tackling core flight software products that impact the Terran R program. You will set standards, establish best practices, and mentor junior engineers. Architect and deliver core flight software focusing on system and performance requirements such as latency, jitter, and control frequency. Collaborate with GNC engineers to integrate algorithms for ascent, re-entry, descent, and landing. Work with Embedded Software Engineers and Avionics to integrate vehicle sensors (GPS, IMU, Radar) and control vehicle equipment (valves, thrust vector controls, landing fins). Develop telemetry systems that prioritize, filter, store, encode/decode, and route data through ground stations and data centers. Support testing infrastructure development, including HITL and HOOTL, as well as physics and fluid simulations. Maximize team velocity by defining processes, adopting modern tools, and mentoring engineers. About You: Bachelor's or master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or Aerospace Engineering and 7+ years of experience. Deep expertise in delivering production-level, real-time embedded software. Proficiency in Rust, C++, or similar systems programming languages. Strong knowledge of algorithms and data structures. Understanding of Operating System concepts like memory management, CPU scheduling, etc. Experience with software development processes including source control, bug tracking, and CI/CD. Nice to Have: Experience developing fault-tolerant systems and knowledge of voting and internal state synchronization. Experience with systems-level programming, synchronization primitives, memory management. Knowledge of networking protocols (UDP, TCP), OSI layers, switching, and routing. Experience with safety standards and formal certification processes (NASA, FAA, FDA, etc.). Relativity Space values transparency and fairness. Compensation will be based on experience and qualifications. Our total rewards include competitive salary and equity, generous PTO, parental leave, learning stipends, and more. For benefits details, please visit our site. Hiring Range: $194,000$249,000 USD We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, marital status, veteran status, or other protected categories. #J-18808-Ljbffr