Materials & Processes Engineer II, Additive Characterization Development (DED)

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:

The Materials & NDE Engineering team is responsible for the development, characterization, and inspection of materials across the Terran R launch vehicle. We specialize in rapid implementation of material systems through robust internal testing capabilities and first principles driven qualification approaches. We have recently made our first primary structure barrel, supported introduction of next generation powder additive alloys in the Aeon-R engine, and developed 100% in-cell NDE inspection capabilities for WAAM manufactured hardware.

The additive technology team leads research and development of Relativity's Stargate 3D-printing platform and factory operating system to produce large-scale metal structures for the industrial base. The team works with robotics engineers, data scientists, systems engineers, and welders to advance Relativity's innovative tech stack, which leverages autonomy, advanced simulation, machine learning, and robotics. Working at the intersection of hardware and software, the team is creating a unified platform that can perform additive manufacturing, in-situ monitoring, NDE, and subtraction capabilities in a single print cell. Progressing in parallel to Terran R development, Relativity's breakthroughs in large-scale additive manufacturing have the potential to revolutionize the defense industrial base.

About the Role:

• Responsible for advancing the characterization of our additively manufactured (AM) directed energy deposition (DED) materials, specifically quantifying and improving our internal understanding of material micro/ macrostructure
• While this role will supplement Relativity Space's vehicle development goals through the Materials & Processes team's shared vision, this role will cover a breath of alloys across the aerospace, marine, and defense industries. This role will heavily support the execution of external contract work
• Quantify and drive improvements to material micro/ macro structure that inform bulk material properties. Combine interdisciplinary knowledge from the additive/ welding process, non-destructive inspection, machining, post-processing, and traditional metalworking processes to supplement material impacts
• Drive improvements to throughput of characterization processes, inform purchases of equipment, and identify external partners that aid in advancing state of the art at Relativity
• Generate data pipelines that incorporate both off the shelf and custom codebases to increase throughput and automation of characterization techniques
• Interface with computational modeling tools (i.e. Thermocalc, CALPHAD)
• Interface with:
  • Weld development team to interpret welding variables across processes
  • Materials laboratory staff to characterize materials and processes
  • Non-destructive examination personnel to understand detected discontinuities
  • Supply chain to specify vendor requirements, audit criteria, and process controls
  • Leadership to elevate risks and overcome roadblocks

About You:

• Background
  • B.S. and 2+ Years of Experience
  • M.S. and 1+ Years of Experience
  • PhD. and 0+ Years of Experience
• Experience with additively manufactured material and characterization of AM
  • Strong Metallurgical understanding of solidification, alloying considerations, and microstructural effects on properties
  • Demonstrated understanding of phase diagrams, small scale alloying considerations to material properties
• Direct experience performing and advancing microstructural characterization (electron microscopy, diffraction, calorimetry) on additive or welded material
• Familiarity with non-destructive examination techniques
• Demonstrated experience driving fundamental material understanding at the micro/ meso scale and informing physical phenomena changes to alter them
• Substantial experience performing design of experiments (DoE)
• Demonstrated ability to generate technical presentations
• Familiarity with material modeling packages and software (Thermocalc, CALPHAD etc)

Nice to haves, but not required:

• Experience with non-destructive examination techniques and an understanding of the physics
• Familiarity with fatigue and damage tolerance (FDT) properties and microstructural influences on them
• Familiarity with key process variables for welding/ DED/ PBF
• Experience with generating statistical allowables for mechanical/ microstructural data
• A thorough understanding of aluminums, Ni-based superalloys, stainless steels, titaniums, aluminum-bronzes, and copper-nickels
• Demonstrated ability for technical writing (published papers, patents)

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:

$112,000-$143,000 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.