Lead Radar Engineer, Mars Orbiter

Relativity Space — Long Beach, US — inconnu

What our tracking knows about this posting

Published on 13 August 2026 · first appeared in our records on 2 September 2026.

Stable posting: first seen on 2 September 2026, with no abnormal reposting.

Advertised salary: 263000 USD.

View the posting at the employer Have my resume reviewed for this job
<div class="content-intro"><p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">At Relativity Space, we’re building rockets to serve today’s needs and tomorrow’s breakthroughs. Our&nbsp;Terran R vehicle will deliver customer payloads to orbit, meeting the growing demand for launch&nbsp;capacity. But that’s just the start. Achieving commercial success with Terran R will unlock new&nbsp;opportunities to advance science, exploration, and innovation, pioneering progress that reaches beyond&nbsp;the known.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">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 </span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">technical rigor go hand in hand, and your voice will help define the stories we’re writing together. Now&nbsp;is a unique moment in time where it’s early enough to leave your mark on the product, the process, and&nbsp;the culture, but far enough along that Terran R is tangible and picking up momentum. The most&nbsp;meaningful work of your career is waiting. Join us.</span></p></div><p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><strong><span data-contrast="none">About the Team:&nbsp;</span></strong></span></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Interplanetary Sciences Program was established to expand access to scientific exploration across our solar system. Its mission is to make planetary research faster, more affordable, and more capable than ever before by rethinking how science missions are designed, built, and operated. The program aims to enable scientists to send instruments to distant worlds without decades of development or prohibitive costs. By creating a sustainable model for interplanetary exploration, we are transforming space science from an occasional event into a continuous process of discovery that accelerates knowledge, broadens participation, and inspires the next generation of explorers.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><strong><span data-contrast="none">About the Role:</span></strong></span></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span data-contrast="auto">You'll&nbsp;be the technical lead and responsible engineer for a wideband UHF shallow radar sounder for a Mars orbiter mission, owning the instrument from design through spacecraft integration, calibration, and commissioning, with no hand-off to another team mid-stream.&nbsp;</span><span data-ccp-props="{}">&nbsp;</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span data-contrast="auto">The instrument&nbsp;operates&nbsp;in two modes: a sounder mode that measures subsurface layer reflections and a radiometer mode that measures the temperature of subsurface layers over a wide footprint.&nbsp;</span><span data-ccp-props="{}">&nbsp;</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span data-contrast="auto">This is a hybrid role: you will personally execute significant portions of the design and analysis while providing technical leadership, working closely with&nbsp;our science&nbsp;partners as their primary engineering counterpart. You will co-design the instrument against science&nbsp;objectives&nbsp;and&nbsp;develop the&nbsp;flight hardware and processing implementations.</span><span data-ccp-props="{}">&nbsp;</span></span></p> <ul> <li style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;" data-contrast="auto">Own the system design for the radar electronics, signal processing chain, and antenna system at the vehicle level for both sounder and radiometer modes, including instrument performance, power, and mass budgets, link budgets, and SNR/penetration-depth analyses</span></li> <li style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;" data-contrast="auto">Lead waveform trade studies in collaboration with the science partners, implement the waveforms and baseline algorithms they develop, and co-design with the science team to ensure the instrument meets science adequacy and mission science objectives</span></li> <li style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;" data-contrast="auto">Lead the hardware development, including prototype development and validation at the brass board level ahead of flight designs</span></li> <li style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span data-contrast="auto">Define the instrument calibration scheme for both radar and radiometer modes</span><span data-ccp-props="{}">&nbsp;</span></span></li> <li style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;" data-contrast="auto">Coordinate hardware development across RF, digital, power, and mechanical disciplines, along with firmware and software development</span></li> <li style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;" data-contrast="auto">Lead instrument qualification and acceptance testing, integration into the spacecraft, and terrestrial analog flight testing, including test integration and post-flight data review</span></li> <li style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;" data-contrast="auto">Perform spectrum licensing and frequency coordination for instrument operation and&nbsp;testing and&nbsp;support instrument calibration and on-orbit commissioning</span></li> </ul> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><strong><span data-contrast="none">About You:</span></strong></span></p> <ul> <li style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;" data-contrast="auto">7+ years of experience in&nbsp;electrical hardware development, such as software defined radios, radar transceivers, or sophisticated digital processors</span></li> <li style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span data-contrast="auto">Demonstrated ability to develop and manage radar system performance budgets</span><span data-ccp-props="{}">&nbsp;</span></span></li> <li style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span data-contrast="auto">Experience with&nbsp;analysis&nbsp;and&nbsp;modeling of radar returns and radar performance</span><span data-ccp-props="{}">&nbsp;</span></span></li> <li style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span data-contrast="auto">Experience implementing radio or radar transceivers as software-defined radios</span><span data-ccp-props="{}">&nbsp;</span></span></li> <li style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span data-contrast="auto">Field testing, flight testing, or spaceflight experience with radio or radar transceivers</span><span data-ccp-props="{}">&nbsp;</span></span></li> <li style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;" data-contrast="auto">Deep expertise in <strong>one or more</strong> of the following:</span> <ul> <li style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;" data-contrast="auto">Implementation of signal processing chains in FPGA and/or GPU processing</span></li> <li style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;" data-contrast="auto">Design of mixed-signal and digital PCBs, such as software-d