Moonshot Engineer

About the Team: 

Dark Matter Lab is a high-autonomy innovation lab built for rapid experimentation, deep-tech prototyping, and bold moonshot thinking. We're a small team of hands-on builders exploring the edges of what's possible, turning raw ideas into world-changing technologies that could reshape the future of aerospace and beyond.

Here, there are no roadmaps handed down – only frontiers to navigate. We operate with speed, embrace ambiguity, and value learning through building. Whether we're developing new hardware, prototyping full-stack systems, or pursuing ideas with breakthrough potential, our work lives at the edge of what's next. You'll be part of a small, multidisciplinary team empowered to define your own projects, move fast, and bring ideas to life. Ideas that one day may advance space systems, autonomous factories, or entirely new industries. 

Dark Matter Lab lives within Relativity Space, a company building the next-generation commercial rocket. By incubating bold ideas and exploring novel applications of Relativity's core capabilities, Dark Matter Lab aims to create high-impact programs with long-term value for Relativity, the aerospace industry, and society at large. 

If you're driven by curiosity, motivated by impact, and excited to work where the rules haven't been written yet, Dark Matter Lab is where you belong.

About the Role:

As part of the 10-person founding team of Dark Matter Labs, you'll be empowered to identify, explore, analyze, prototype, and realize world-changing ideas in space. This role will allow you to bring your own passions for space as well as explore, find, and prove out new moonshots on the cutting edge of science and engineering.

Moonshot Engineers will be wearing many different hats, from technical leadership, detailed design & analysis, prototype build & testing, vendor management & POs, and other responsibilities necessary to make moonshots a reality.

This role will be expected to take ownership of a handful of moonshots and drive them all the way from an ambiguous "What if..." idea, organizing contributions from other lab members, proving the idea via prototype testing, and finally realizing the idea through design and production of a scaling product. Likewise, this role will also be contributing directly to a number of other moonshots through technology exploration, detailed analysis, part design, prototype build or testing, and other engineering efforts. 

About You:

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, or a related field.
• 7+ years of experience in design and delivery of complex systems or products
• Passionate self-starter with a track record of charting a path through ambiguity, leading technical projects, organizing efforts & people, and managing timelines and expectations
• Deep technical expertise in one core discipline (i.e. Mechanical, Electrical, Software, etc.) but familiar & comfortable with a multitude of other disciplines
• Great communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively with many different other mindsets and perspectives and willingness to challenge and be challenged
• Hands-on design, build, and test experience with hardware and/or software required for prototyping – familiar with or willing to learn CAD, EE/PCB, harnessing, embedded SW, python, test hardware, etc... 

Nice to have but not required:  

• Proven track record of delivering tangible hardware or product in highly open ended or ambiguous environments or product spaces
• Prior experience at hardware & software early phase technology exploration or innovation labs (i.e. GoogleX, Skunkworks, etc..)