Staff Technical Program Manager

Relativity Space · Long Beach, California, United States

  • Senior
  • Full-time
  • $152,000 – $228,000
  • Posted 2026-09-24
  • Confirmed live on 25 September 2026

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Job description

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 Vehicle Engineering organization at Relativity Space owns the Terran R launch vehicle across its full life cycle - from design through build, qualification, and flight - along with the analysis, software, CONOPs development, risk management, and customer-facing and regulatory activities needed to operate Terran R successfully.

About the Role:

• We are seeking a Staff Technical Program Manager to manage cross-functional program execution across a product lifecycle from early design through to flight. We are looking for someone who is comfortable operating between the 10,000 ft. view of the program and zooming in to solve a critical bottleneck. In this role, they will collaborate with technical leaders, manufacturing and ops counterparts, and other program managers to ensure successful execution of top line business objectives, often translating ambiguous long-term ideas into a set of clear trade-offs and priorities. They will analyze problems and drive recommendations that balance the needs of technical teams and the business, anchoring back to data. They will actively own and manage schedules, identify & mitigate programmatic risk, and drive communication across functional teams. A strong desire to build agile, fit for purpose processes from scratch, get your hands dirty, and influence a wide range of technical and operational teams are foundational to success in this role.

Execution Strategy & Risk Management

• Translate long-term business objectives and priorities into a clear execution plan for your area of ownership

• Build and own the schedule, deriving it from real requirements, resources, and dependencies & ensuring alignment with key company milestones

• Identify, assess, and mitigate risks associated with program execution, ensuring proactive resolution of issues coming down the pipeline

• Identify resource gaps and coordinate cross-functional planning for resource allocation, including headcount, budget, and workspace needs

• Develop ways of working and cadences between teams to ensure efficient execution, collaboration, and alignment

• Communicate program updates, risks, and trade-offs to senior management and cross-functional stakeholders, grounded in data, deciphering signal from noise, and driving decision making when required

• Identify and drive to resolve future programmatic risks, keeping line of sight to 12mo+ strategic initiatives that are critical for business milestones

Cross-Functional and Strategic Leadership

• Collaborate with PMOs and department leaders to integrate workstream schedules into the program-level Integrated Master Schedule (IMS), and use the IMS to understand true program critical path, dependencies, and decision points

• Work with functional partners to align priorities when there are competing needs. Drive improvements to department-level program management tooling to continually improve program efficiency and operational excellence

• Coordinate efforts across key bodies of work over development lifecycle, including design release, engineering trades, handoffs between teams, and operational burndown ahead of key milestones. Incorporate new capabilities leveraging automation and AI, when available

• Lead by influence and collaborate with technical owners (engineering, supply chain, manufacturing, test, and launch) to establish a plan & empower strong functional ownership

Process Improvement & Team Growth

• Spearhead the creation and continual refinement of effective, lightweight program management processes, tools, and templates that improve efficiency and cross-team collaboration

• Establish ways of working and ownership model to that ensure programmatic lessons learned are being

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