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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 both the rocket and the factory systems needed to manufacture at scale.
The Tooling and Factory Automation team sits at the intersection of design, manufacturing, and automation. This group designs and builds everything from large-scale structural fixtures to specialized tools that directly enable Terran R production. Embedded within the manufacturing organization, the team works closely with internal partners to understand root problems, propose solutions, and deliver hardware that enables faster building, smarter scaling, and better operations.
As a Principal Mechanical Engineer, you will lead the design and development of tools and factory automation equipment supporting manufacturing. You'll be responsible for developing high-quality development and production tooling and automation solutions for the Terran vehicle and Aeon engine programs. Your work spans a wide range of technical challenges including material handling, assembly fixtures, off-loaders, rotisseries, test fixtures, structural weldments, environmental chambers, and custom machines.
You will integrate concepts and principles of mechanical design and analysis across multiple projects in a fast-paced environment, with projects varying significantly in size and scale. You'll interpret and apply sound design and drafting standards (ASME Y14.5) in creating tooling definitions. Close collaboration with component designers, manufacturing engineers, and integration engineering teams is essential to achieve optimal cradle-to-grave metrics including safety, cost, quality, cycle time, delivery, reliability, life, and maintenance/refurbishment.
This role offers significant autonomy to make decisions, field solutions, and see them implemented on the factory floor. You're not just designing tools or automated processes; you're defining how rockets and factories get built. The team is at the forefront of Relativity's growing factory automation efforts, an increasingly critical part of scaling production at existing and future facilities.
