Sr. Vehicle Manufacturing Engineer, Primary Structures

- Mid Level

Long Beach, CA

Transportation Equipment Manufacturing

About the position

The Manufacturing Engineering team owns all process development, fabrication strategy, and production equipment for Terran R, our next generation, reusable rocket. We have a wide variety of responsibilities - from factory floor layout, to developing complex tooling for novel processes, and interfacing with our vehicle engineering team to heavily influence design of the rocket. The manufacturing team leverages our deep expertise to translate engineering requirements into highly optimized production lines. Unique to Relativity, you will work cross functionally to iterate and support the development of the vehicle program.

Responsibilities

• Own a major primary structure assembly station for Terran R, as well as all associated flight parts and assembly processes, defining operational strategies and working to build upon existing methods.
• Support the shop floor through live issue resolution and provide upstream feedback as we innovate the next generation of manufacturing technology.
• Generate high quality work instructions, specifications, and best practices across multiple high-fidelity processes. Standardize processes where possible, and partner with production team to reduce takt time and increase throughput rates.
• Analyze and disposition manufacturing non-conformances and lead multi-disciplinary teams on root cause analysis and corrective actions.
• Generate build orders and schedules, and come up with creative ways to stay on track.
• Support conceptual and detailed design of major tooling assemblies alongside tooling engineering. Support procurement, commissioning, and initial trial builds, ensuring tooling is delivered on time and with the right capabilities.
• Provide Design for Manufacturing feedback to structures teams during the development phase and through the first prototype and flight builds.

Requirements

• BS or MS degree in mechanical, manufacturing, aerospace, or other relevant engineering discipline with 5+ years of related experience.
• Knowledgeable about cutting edge manufacturing processes that can add or enhance existing manufacturing capabilities.
• Extensive experience authoring work instructions, dispositioning non-conformant products in a production environment, and resolving complex manufacturing challenges with technician teams.
• Experienced in bring-up and support of manufacturing work centers.
• Mastery of GD&T and drafting principles, expert familiarity with CAD software such as NX.
• Ability to work autonomously with little supervision in a fast-paced environment, extremely detail oriented and organized.
• Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to lead cross-functional teams.
• Demonstrated mastery of using first principles to perform trade studies and reason through complex problems, able to make informed decisions using engineering fundamentals.
• Expert level knowledge of at least 2 of the following: Welding (fusion or friction stir welding), machining, precision drilling, mechanical fastening and torquing, tool design and fabrication, NDT, subassembly build.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience designing or using tooling for manufacturing large metallic structures, bonus points for experience with welding turning roll systems.
• Experience with new process introduction in a manufacturing environment and/or building first article assemblies, especially in a startup environment.
• Demonstrated success with improving takt time in a production process, and/or transitioning products from prototype to mass production.
• Experience in capacity analyses, DFMEA/PFMEA, value stream mapping.