Sr Director, Mechanical Design Engineering, Tooling

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 Tooling and Factory Automation team sits at the intersection of design, manufacturing, and automation, making everything from large-scale structural fixtures to small tools that directly enable Terran R’s production. As a design group embedded within the manufacturing organization, we dig deep into the needs of our internal partners to understand root problems, propose solutions, and deliver hardware to help build faster, scale smarter, and work better. The team is also at the forefront of Relativity’s growing factory automation efforts, an increasingly critical part of scaling production of Terran R at existing and future facilities. You’ll have the autonomy to make decisions, field solutions, and see them in action on the factory floor. Ultimately, you’re not just designing tools or automated processes; you’re defining how rockets and factories get built.

About the Role:

• Lead and develop a high-performing team of tooling engineers delivering solutions that enable safe, efficient, and repeatable production.


• Define and execute the long-term tooling strategy, aligning priorities across design, manufacturing, and operations to support current and future production goals.


• Oversee design, fabrication, and commissioning of complex tooling systems that improve manufacturability, quality, and throughput across multiple work centers.


• Manage the tooling project portfolio, driving cost, schedule, and technical performance to ensure readiness for both production and development programs.


• Partner with design engineering and manufacturing teams to ensure tooling readiness for new product introductions and continuous product evolution.


• Standardize best practices for design documentation, preventive maintenance, and configuration control to ensure reliability and compliance across all tooling assets.

About You:  

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical, Manufacturing, or Aerospace Engineering (or equivalent experience).


• 12+ years of experience in tooling design, manufacturing engineering, or related field, with 6+ years in people leadership. 


• Expertise with CAD and PLM systems (e.g., NX, Teamcenter, CATIA, SolidWorks).


• Demonstrated experience leading large-scale tooling initiatives for complex hardware (structures, assemblies, or propulsion).


• Strong understanding of GD&T, tolerance analysis, materials, and manufacturing processes (machining, composites, weldments, additive). Proven ability to manage cross-functional programs balancing cost, schedule, and performance.

Nice to haves but not required:  

• Experience in aerospace, automotive, or oil & gas production environments with rapid development cycles.


• Background in Lean manufacturing and Design for Manufacturability (DFM).


• Experience with factory automation, lifting and handling systems, or test tooling.


• Strong leadership presence with ability to coach and scale engineering organizations.

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 [email protected].