Job Description
Lead Thermal Engineer
About the Role:
We are seeking a Lead Thermal Engineer to own the design, analysis, and validation of thermal control solutions for a high-altitude aerospace vehicle operating in extreme stratospheric environments.
This role is responsible for ensuring reliable thermal performance of avionics, payloads, energy systems, and structures through a combination of modeling, hardware support, and test validation.
Key Responsibilities:
- Design and optimize active and passive thermal control architectures
- Perform steady-state and transient thermal analyses
- Develop and correlate thermal models across mission environments
- Support material, insulation, coating, radiator, and interface trade studies
- Define thermal requirements, margins, and operating limits for critical subsystems
- Support environmental testing: thermal vacuum, altitude simulation, temperature cycling
- Analyze test results, correlate against predictions, and drive design improvements
- Collaborate across mechanical, electrical, systems, and manufacturing teams
- Document analyses, compliance, and test readiness for flight hardware
Required Qualifications:
- BS in Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering (or related field)
- 5–10 years hands-on thermal engineering experience on aerospace or flight systems
- Proven ownership of thermal decisions through design, integration, and validation
- Strong applied heat transfer expertise, especially in low-density environments
- Experience with ANSYS, Thermal Desktop, COMSOL, or similar tools