Senior Bid Manager, Advanced Manufacturing

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: Horizon Manufacturing Technologies is Relativity’s externally facing advanced manufacturing business, leveraging cutting-edge advanced manufacturing capabilities to solve critical supply chain challenges across the US industrial base. The business is pioneering convergent manufacturing – integrating large-scale additive, subtractive, and inspection through an autonomous platform to unlock the next generation of design freedom and manufacturing capability. This is an environment where cutting-edge R&D is put into production, industrializing advanced manufacturing capabilities to solve customer problems. You’ll work alongside welders, robotics engineers, data scientists, and systems engineers at the intersection of hardware and software, creating an end-to-end convergent manufacturing platform that serves customers across aerospace, defense, marine, energy, and nuclear sectors. About the Role: Own the end-to-end bid process – Lead RFQ/RFP response from initial customer inquiry through technical feasibility assessment, cost estimation, risk evaluation, scheduling, and final proposal delivery. Build repeatable bidding systems – Establish structured workflows for cost estimating, technical feasibility reviews, and bid/no-bid decision frameworks that scale as the business grows. Drive cost estimation and pricing discipline – Develop accurate cost and price models for complex additively manufactured parts, integrating material, labor, equipment utilization, post-processing, and risk factors. Serve as technical-commercial translator – Evaluate customer designs for manufacturability, identify geometric limitations, material property requirements, and post-processing needs, and work with engineering to develop alternative approaches or qualification plans when customer requirements push capability boundaries. Support the entire sales cycle – Partner with Business Development Managers on customer meetings, technical presentations, and contract negotiations as the technical credibility anchor. About You: 5+ years in technical bidding, sales engineering, or application engineering within contract manufacturing, additive manufacturing, metal fabrication, or job shop environments. Strong technical foundation with hands-on manufacturing knowledge – You can interpret complex engineering documents, understand metal manufacturing processes (welding, machining, heat treatment, post-processing), assess DFM (design for manufacturing) considerations, and translate customer requirements into internal technical requirements to enable accurate quoting. Structured process builder and excellent communicator – You build systems (templates, workflows, qualification criteria) that make bidding repeatable, and you can present confidently to executives, engineers, and procurement teams. Cross-functional orchestrator – You drive alignment across engineering, operations, and commercial teams without formal authority, balancing technical feasibility, competitive pricing, and realistic schedules Scrappy and entrepreneurial – You’re comfortable with ambiguity, willing to wear multiple hats, and energized by building something new rather than managing an existing process. Nice to haves but not required: Experience in Wire Arc Direct Energy Deposition (DED) or large-scale additive manufacturing with metal 3D printing technologies Manufacturing engineering, welding, or metallurgy background with hands-on fabrication experience that informs cost and feasibility assessments Defense or aerospace contract manufacturing background including experience with CUI, DFARS, ITAR, AS9100, or selling into primes and government customers Early-stage or startup manufacturing experience where you built bidding/estimating processes rather than inherited them in resource-constrained, high-growth environments At Relativity Space, we are committed to transparency and fairness in our compensation practices. Actual compensation will be determined based on experience, qualifications, and other job-related factors. Compensation is only one part of our total rewards package. Relativity Space offers competitive salary and equity, a generous PTO and sick leave policy, parental leave, an annual learning and development stipend, and more! To see some of the benefits & perks we offer, please visit here. Hiring Range: $122,000 — $182,000 USD 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 accommodations@relativityspace.com . Please note: Relativity Space does not accept unsolicited resumes, candidate profiles, or referrals from recruitment agencies or search firms. Any unsolicited submission - via email, our website, social media, or directly to an employee - will be deemed the property of Relativity Space, and no fee will be owed absent a current, fully executed agreement with Talent Acquisition that specifically authorizes submissions for the applicable role.