<candidate>NASA Picked a Rocket Company With No Orbital Record to Reach Mars. The 27 Jobs It Just Posted Reveal Why.</candidate>

NASA Picks Relativity Space for Historic Mars Mission

In June 2026, NASA announced a public-private partnership with Relativity Space for a Mars orbiter mission slated for launch in 2028. The mission, codenamed Aeolus, will carry four atmospheric-science instruments to Mars orbit, delivering what NASA says will be the first daily global imagery data of Martian dust, wind patterns, and temperature. The data is intended to support future landing missions and lay groundwork for eventual crewed expeditions.

The deal splits responsibilities along a model NASA has used before: the agency provides the scientific payload and sets mission objectives, while Relativity supplies the spacecraft, the rocket, and cruise operations. Neither NASA nor Relativity has disclosed the contract value.

For a company whose first rocket, Terran-1, failed during its maiden flight in March 2023, the award marks a sharp inflection point. Relativity subsequently pivoted to its larger Terran R vehicle, which is still in development. The company faced financing pressure through that transition until former Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt acquired a majority stake in 2025 and took over as CEO. Schmidt has signaled ambitions beyond launch services, including orbital data centers, but the Aeolus contract is the most visible validation yet of the company's approach at interplanetary scale.

Relativity currently lacks a proven orbital flight record, and whether Terran R can deliver a payload to Mars by 2028 remains an open question. But if the mission launches on schedule and reaches orbit, a company founded in 2016 will have sent a spacecraft to Mars. This possibility is already reshaping who Relativity hires and where.

Inside the Hiring Push: Additive Manufacturing Takes Center Stage

NASA's Mars orbiter award coincides with a staffing buildout at Relativity's Long Beach headquarters. Zero G Talent's board shows 27 roles added in the past week. The listings cluster in three overlapping disciplines: additive manufacturing, propulsion integration, and test operations.

Open positions include Integration Technician II, Thrust Structure and Senior Integration Technician, Subassemblies, both in Long Beach, both on second shift. These map directly to Terran R's production ramp. A Technician I, LP-DED Additive posting on LinkedIn calls for hands-on experience with laser powder-directed energy deposition, the process Relativity uses to print large-format rocket components like the Aeon R engine. The job description states the technician will "directly support LP-DED Additive work center buildout, first prints, and optimizing operations to meet production demand."

At the engineering level, an Additive Manufacturing Engineer I listing on Built In described developing processes to "continuously improve manufacturing cost, quality, and lead time" and owning the full chain from design-for-additive through build-file programming to quality verification. Indeed lists 192 Relativity Space propulsion engineer openings covering the full lifecycle of engine components from initial design through qualification and flight.

The company employs roughly 2,200 people across all sites. For a workforce that size, 27 new postings concentrated in Long Beach manufacturing roles is meaningful — not a stampede, but a signal that the Mars contract has turned planning into requisitions.

Why 3D-Printed Rockets Change the Talent Equation

Relativity's Terran 1 rocket was 85% 3D-printed by mass when it reached space in March 2023. That reshapes what kind of engineer the company needs.

Traditional rocket manufacturing locks a design into casts, molds, and tooling months before the first part ships. Scott Van Vliet, former senior vice president of software engineering, avionics, and additive manufacturing at Relativity, described the difference: with a 3D printer, engineers change a CAD file, print the part, treat it, and send it to the test stand. No retooling. No waiting. That compression of the design-build-test cycle means Relativity needs people who can operate at the intersection of materials science, process engineering, and rapid iteration.

The company's Stargate printer uses wire arc additive manufacturing to build rocket bodies, while its Aeon engines rely on powder bed fusion. Each process demands different expertise. An Additive Manufacturing Technical Specialist I role calls for three or more years working with powder bed fusion printers, laser optics calibration, and hands-on maintenance of sensors, valves, and actuators — a specialist technician role that barely existed in aerospace a decade ago.

On the engineering side, an Avionics Test Engineer I posting requires experience with data acquisition platforms like NI or Beckhoff, communication protocols like CAN and SPI, and scripting in Python or MATLAB. A GNC Engineer I role asks for C++ or Python alongside classical control theory and Kalman filtering. Both positions are in Long Beach, plus equity.

Paul Gradl, principal engineer of component development at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, has worked directly with Relativity through a series of Space Act Agreements. His team helped the company incorporate GRCop-42, a copper-chromium-niobium alloy NASA invented that adapts well to additive manufacturing. Gradl said the biggest advantage of 3D printing is schedule savings: lead times for some parts drop by a factor of two to ten.

The next challenge is scale. Relativity's Aeon R engine, planned for the Terran R rocket, is designed to produce more than ten times the thrust of the Aeon 1. Jake Shearman, senior manager of combustion devices at Relativity, said scaling additive manufacturing to that size is something the aerospace industry hasn't solved yet. NASA's ongoing research into larger-format printing is feeding directly into that effort, with weekly virtual meetings between Marshall and Relativity engineers.

Long Beach Emerges as a Space-Tech Hub

Relativity's 27 open roles in Long Beach — tied to integration, environmental testing, or thrust structure assembly — represent more than a hiring push. They signal that the city is becoming a functional base for the kind of hands-on, manufacturing-adjacent engineering that 3D-printed rockets demand.

SpaceX's Hawthorne campus leans heavily toward software, avionics, and launch operations. Blue Origin's 124 new listings are spread across Seattle, Florida, Alabama, and the Bay Area. Relativity's concentration in Long Beach is different: it's building a single-site workforce around additive manufacturing at scale.

The distinction matters for engineers choosing where to work. Hawthorne offers proximity to SpaceX's launch cadence and a deep bench of adjacent startups. The Space Coast gives access to actual launch infrastructure. Long Beach offers a chance to work inside a company where the factory floor and the design floor overlap. Relativity's Terran R is meant to be almost entirely 3D-printed, which means the technicians assembling thrust structures and subassemblies are iterating on a process that's still being defined.

The risk is that Long Beach remains a one-company town. Hawthorne has SpaceX plus a constellation of suppliers and startups; the Space Coast has NASA, the military, and multiple launch providers. Long Beach's aerospace identity is, for now, Relativity. If the Mars orbiter mission succeeds and Terran R reaches orbit, that identity solidifies. If it doesn't, the talent pool disperses.

How Relativity Stacks Up Against SpaceX and Blue Origin

The Mars orbiter win puts Relativity in an unusual position: it needs to scale a highly specialized workforce while two much larger competitors hire at volume across the same talent pool.

Zero G Talent's board shows SpaceX added 98 roles in the past seven days. Blue Origin added 124. Relativity added 27. SpaceX and Blue Origin are staffing across a wide aperture (Starlink growth managers, supply chain directors, automation integration leads) roles that reflect mature production lines and diversified programs. Relativity's latest listings are almost entirely hands-on integration and test technicians at its Long Beach facility.

Relativity's technician roles, which don't list salary ranges on the board, likely sit below both competitors.

But Relativity's niche is also its recruiting pitch. Engineers who want to work on 3D-printed orbital spacecraft headed to Mars have exactly one employer. SpaceX prints some components but builds most of its vehicles through conventional manufacturing. Blue Origin's New Glenn uses additive methods selectively. Relativity's entire architecture depends on it, which means the engineers who join now will own processes that don't exist at the other two companies.

The risk is that Relativity's narrow focus makes it vulnerable to poaching once those engineers are trained. A technician who spends two years integrating 3D-printed thrust structures for a Mars mission becomes exactly the candidate SpaceX or Blue Origin would want for their own additive programs. Retention, through mission attachment, equity, or both, will determine whether Long Beach becomes a lasting talent hub or a feeder system for Hawthorne and Kent.

What This Means for the Deep-Space Workforce

Relativity's NASA contract for a Mars orbiter signals a shift in which skills the deep-space sector will need over the next decade. The companies building interplanetary hardware are already reshaping what they recruit for, and the gap between what universities produce and what these companies need is widening.

A Mars orbiter built on 3D-printed structures requires engineers who understand how metallic components behave after months of deep-space radiation exposure. This problem barely existed in the aerospace workforce five years ago. Relativity's Long Beach team is already hiring integration technicians and test-lab specialists to solve exactly those problems.

The deeper implication is about workforce development pipelines. Universities have barely started offering degree tracks that combine additive manufacturing with aerospace systems engineering. Relativity's approach (printing roughly 85% of a rocket's mass) means the next generation of deep-space engineers needs fluency in materials science, thermal modeling, and real-time sensor feedback loops. That combination doesn't fit neatly into traditional mechanical or electrical engineering departments.

What comes after the Mars orbiter matters more than the orbiter itself. If NASA moves toward sustained Mars presence (sample return, then crewed missions) the demand shifts from one-off hardware to in-space manufacturing and repair. The engineers Relativity is hiring now will define whether that transition is possible, or whether the sector hits a talent wall at the exact moment interplanetary missions scale up.

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