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Salary: USD 90,000 - 136,000 / annual
Relativity Space is 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. The company is developing a rocket, factory, and business from the ground up, with a focus on reusability and advanced engineering.
The Integrated Performance teams ensure that Relativity's products work across all systems and disciplines, from trajectory design to aerodynamics to reliability analysis. Recently, the team completed preliminary design and analysis of Terran R, including the company's first-ever work on launch vehicle reusability, spanning advanced trajectory simulations, wind tunnel testing, and structures analysis.
As an Aerothermal Engineer I, you will develop and execute computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses to solve novel challenges in vehicle entry heating and supersonic retropropulsion. You will drive the design of major Terran R system elements—such as fins, flaps, heat shields, and primary structure—to meet criteria for temperature and heating. You will guide and mentor responsible hardware engineers to ensure hardware meets aerothermal requirements.
Key responsibilities include scoping and developing aerothermal databases for ascent and entry, including uncertainty quantification, from multiple sources like CFD, empirical methods, and wind tunnel testing. You will size thermal protection systems (TPS) for flight, support reusable TPS material development and testing, and mature Relativity's tools for developing and communicating aerothermal data, including custom and commercial code, databases, and data processing tools.
On a weekly basis, you will perform analysis, develop software tools, and support design teams. You will use strong organizational skills to properly manage documentation and communication of your actions, recommendations, and decisions. You should be self-motivated, adaptable, and able to contribute significantly to a fast-paced, integrated vehicle program. You should also be able to resolve ambiguity and drive projects to completion.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Undergraduate degree in engineering or related field
- 2+ years relevant experience
- Proficiency in compressible flow and thermal analysis, preferably on entry vehicles
- Experience executing CFD workflows for external flow, preferably including engine plume simulation
- Experience solving cross-disciplinary design problems on integrated vehicles
- Proficiency in Python and industry-standard CFD tools like FUN3D and Star-CCM+, including use of HPC clusters
NICE TO HAVES (NOT REQUIRED):
- Graduate degree in engineering or related field
- 5+ years relevant experience across 1 or more program lifecycles
- Experience with thermal protection system sizing & analysis using standard tools like FIAT, CHAR, MINIVER, or LAURA
- Exposure to aerothermal instrumentation, wind tunnel and flight testing
