Senior Thermal Engineer
Portland, OR$155k - $200kfull-timePosted 3mo ago
About the role
Senior Thermal Engineer responsible for end-to-end thermal simulation workflow for low- and high-power electromechanical systems in harsh marine environments, emphasizing rapid design iteration, first-principles thinking, and high-fidelity CFD.
Responsibilities
- Own thermal simulation and analysis workflows for onboard payloads, electronics, cooling systems, pressure-contained assemblies, and related mechanical systems.
- Build and execute fast, reliable thermal CFD workflows that support rapid design iteration in close collaboration with mechanical design, electrical engineering, payload architecture, and prototyping teams.
- Translate component-level thermal inputs, power maps, packaging constraints, and environmental conditions into actionable system and subsystem thermal requirements.
- Analyze unit- and payload-level thermal architectures to define required airflow, liquid flow rates, heat sink performance, cold plate requirements, thermal interface assumptions, allowable pressure drops, and related cooling design parameters.
- Work with electrical and mechanical engineers to define cooling interfaces and design targets that can be directly incorporated into board layouts, enclosure designs, heat sinks, manifolds, ducts, cold plates, and other hardware.
- Evaluate and select appropriate modeling approaches, ranging from hand calculations and reduced-order models to detailed CFD, depending on the design question and required fidelity.
- Assess GPU-accelerated and high-performance simulation tools for thermal analysis, including commercial and open-source options such as Fluent, STAR-CCM+, HELYX/OpenFOAM-based workflows, and emerging solver technologies.
- Own the full simulation lifecycle, including geometry preparation, CAD interaction, meshing, solver setup, execution, debugging, convergence assessment, post-processing, visualization, and communication of results.
- Work directly with CAD and design teams, including NX-based workflows, to simplify, prepare, and modify geometry for simulation and rapid design exploration.
- Develop thermal models for high-power compute and electronics payloads, including conduction, convection, liquid cooling, heat exchangers, cold plates, sealed enclosures, and thermal interfaces.
- Analyze cooling architectures for systems operating in rugged, space-constrained, and environmentally exposed conditions.
- Support the design of cooling systems that may use ambient environmental heat sinks, liquid loops, pressure boundaries, and mechanically integrated thermal paths.
- Identify dominant thermal resistances, failure modes, uncertainty sources, and design sensitivities using first-principles reasoning.
- Validate simulation results against prototype tests, lab measurements, field data, and experimental observations.
- Develop post-processing and visualization methods that clearly communicate thermal margins, flow behavior, hot spots, pressure losses, uncertainty, and design tradeoffs.
- Partner with prototype and test teams to define instrumentation plans, test conditions, acceptance criteria, and validation approaches.
- Help build reusable simulation pipelines, templates, automation, and best practices for thermal analysis across payload and onboard system designs.
- Apply engineering judgment to identify misleading, overfit, under-resolved, or physically inconsistent simulation results.
- Contribute to optimization and design exploration workflows, including adjoint methods, parametric studies, surrogate models, and automated geometry or cooling-system optimization where appropriate.
Qualifications
- Strong background in thermal engineering, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, and numerical simulation.
- Deep experience with thermal CFD for electronics, compute systems, aerospace, marine, automotive, or other high-power engineered systems.
- Demonstrated ability to use CFD as an engineering tool rather than as a black box.
- Experience translating component-level heat loads, thermal limits, and packaging constraints into system-level cooling requirements and hardware design targets.
- Experience with the full CFD workflow: geometry preparation, meshing, boundary condition definition, solver setup, convergence/debugging, post-processing, and validation.
- Hands-on experience with one or more major CFD tools such as STAR-CCM+, ANSYS Fluent, HELYX/OpenFOAM, or comparable high-performance solvers.
- Experience evaluating model fidelity, mesh sensitivity, turbulence models, conjugate heat transfer, transient effects, boundary condition uncertainty, and numerical error.
- Ability to move quickly between analytical calculations, reduced-order models, and detailed CFD depending on the problem.
- Experience working closely with mechanical and electrical design teams and iterating directly on hardware concepts.
- Comfortable working with CAD geometry and simulation-prep workflows; NX experience is strongly preferred.
- Strong communication skills and ability to work with high-bandwidth technical teams across mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, physics, controls, prototyping, and systems architecture.
- Ability to clearly explain assumptions, requirements, results, uncertainty, and design implications to both specialists and non-specialists.
- Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Applied Physics, or a related field; advanced degree preferred.
Skills
Required:Thermal CFDCFD toolsThermal modelingCAD and simulation prepFirst-principles reasoningCommunication
Nice to have:Optimization and automation
Benefits
- Flexible paid time off
- Health insurance (company pays 100% of gold-level PPO plan for full-time employees, partners, and dependents)
- Dental insurance (company pays 100%)
- Vision insurance (company pays 100%)
- Disability insurance (company pays 100%)
- Ability to contribute to tax-advantaged accounts, including 401(k), health FSA, and dependent care FSA
- Relocation assistance to Portland (if needed)
Last updated Sep 7, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
About Panthalassa
Go where the energy is
We're harnessing renewable energy in the open ocean and delivering it around the world. Engineered in Portland, Oregon.
Planetary-scale energyclean energy platformrenewable energyocean energypilot deploymentpublic-benefit corporation
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