Sr Software Engineer, Compiler & Runtime

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 Terrestrial Software team is building the foundation for an automated rocket factory and integrated launch platform. Their mission is to automate and streamline workflows across the entire lifecycle of Terran R, from raw material intake to launch operations and eventually manufacturing on Mars. Today, that means partnering directly with teams across design, materials, manufacturing, and test and launch to design, implement, and deploy end user enterprise-wide applications, industrial automation, data analytics infrastructure, and next-generation AI to solve real problems and accelerate progress. Long term, the team is laying the groundwork for a modular, scalable software platform that can power highly autonomous operations on Earth and beyond. This is a team for builders and thinkers who thrive on cross-functional impact and want to shape the digital backbone of our future in space.

About the Role:

On the Automation and Control Engineering (ACE) team, you will design, build, and operate the software that connects our automated factory, test facilities, and launch systems. ACE is responsible for the full stack-from the central platform down to the device-level software running on controllers and equipment-and your work will directly shape how Terran R is built, tested, and flown.

• • Own features end-to-end across the software development lifecycle: from problem framing and architecture through implementation, test, deployment, and operation
• Build and maintain the platform services (real-time data pipelines, orchestration, UI, alerting), automation tooling and languages, and device-level software used by teams across the company to control and monitor real hardware
• Partner directly with hardware, test, manufacturing, and launch teams to design, instrument, and continuously improve automation and control systems that are safe, observable, and resilient in production environments

About You: 

• You have 7+ years of experience in systems programming (C++ or Rust) and/or programming language implementation, with strong fundamentals in compilers, interpreters, or virtual machines
• You have built or extended domain-specific languages or execution engines for hardware automation, scientific computation, trading, or other real-time domains where correctness, latency, and memory footprint matter
• You are comfortable designing fast, low-allocation code paths and reasoning about performance in terms of cache behavior, allocation patterns, and data layout
• You are excited to work on a proprietary language used for live hardware control and calculations, and to collaborate closely with users to evolve the language and runtime in a safety-critical context

Nice to haves but not required:

• Academic or industry background in compilers, static analysis, formal methods, or programming languages research
• Experience implementing type systems, bytecode interpreters, JITs, or code generation pipelines optimized for low latency and small memory footprints
• Experience building scriptable automation frameworks or configuration/DSL layers on top of C++/Rust systems used to orchestrate hardware, tests, or complex workflows
• Familiarity with real-time scheduling, concurrency models, and fault-tolerance techniques used when a language or runtime is responsible for controlling physical equipment

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.

Hiring Range:

$154,000—$211,000 USD

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.

Hiring Range:

$154,000—$211,000 USD

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.

Hiring Range:

$154,000—$211,000 USD

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.

If you need a reasonable accommodation, please contact us at accommodations@relativityspace.com.