Senior Principal Thermal Engineer

Hewlett Packard Enterprise • Sunnyvale, CA

1d • $181,000 - $367,000 • Onsite

About The Position

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is seeking a Senior Principal Thermal Engineer to provide technical leadership in advanced thermal management for high-performance networking, AI, compute, and data-center hardware. The role defines and drives thermal technology vision, architectures, methodologies, and innovation roadmaps across advanced air cooling, liquid cooling, hybrid cooling, and emerging solutions.

The engineer will identify and mature next-generation cooling technologies, guide long-term platform strategies, influence industry direction, and address critical business and customer challenges. The role is expected to deliver lasting impact on product performance, reliability, energy efficiency, sustainability, cost optimization, and differentiation. It includes influencing executive and cross-functional decisions, shaping technology investments, collaborating with industry partners and suppliers, contributing to standards development, mentoring engineers, and strengthening HPE's technical community.

This position is designated onsite, with the expectation that the employee will primarily work from an HPE office. The listed U.S. base salary range for California is USD 181,000–367,000 annually; variable incentives may also be offered. Actual offers may vary based on location, experience, education or training, and skill level.

Requirements

• Bachelor's or master's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Thermal Sciences, Aerospace Engineering, Physics, or a related engineering discipline.
• Typically 15 or more years of experience in thermal engineering, electronics cooling, or related disciplines, including recognized expertise in advanced air-cooling and/or liquid-cooling technologies.
• Demonstrated technical leadership and industry impact through innovative thermal solutions, advanced technology programs, major architecture contributions, or pioneering cooling technologies.
• Proven ability to influence technology direction across organizations, business units, suppliers, customers, and industry groups.
• Deep expertise in electronics thermal management, including advanced air cooling, liquid cooling, hybrid cooling architectures, and emerging cooling technologies for networking, AI, compute, and data-center applications.
• Expert understanding of heat transfer, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, airflow optimization, heat sink design, vapor chambers, heat pipes, cold plates, heat exchangers, flow distribution, pressure drop, and thermal system optimization.
• Advanced knowledge of air-cooled architectures, including system airflow management, fan technologies, acoustic optimization, thermal control strategies, and high-density electronics cooling.
• Extensive experience with thermal and CFD simulation tools such as FloTHERM, FloEFD, Icepak, Star-CCM+, Macroflow, or equivalent platforms.
• Strong understanding of technology readiness assessment, feasibility studies, experimental design, thermal characterization, and performance validation techniques.
• Knowledge of industry trends involving AI infrastructure, high-density networking systems, advanced semiconductor packaging, co-packaged optics, photonics, rack-scale architectures, and sustainable data-center technologies.
• Outstanding analytical and creative problem-solving skills, including the ability to identify disruptive technologies and translate them into strategic business value.
• Strong business acumen and executive-level communication skills to influence engineering teams, senior leadership, and external partners.
• Demonstrated record of innovation through patents, industry publications, conference presentations, standards participation, or successful deployment of differentiated cooling technologies.

Nice To Haves

• An advanced degree in Mechanical Engineering, Thermal Sciences, Aerospace Engineering, Physics, or a related engineering discipline is preferred.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the long-term thermal technology vision, strategy, and roadmap for HPE Networking products, spanning advanced air cooling, liquid cooling, hybrid cooling, and emerging thermal management technologies.
• Identify, evaluate, mature, and recommend next-generation cooling technologies for future AI, networking, high-performance compute, and data-center platforms.
• Establish thermal architectures, design methodologies, technology standards, modeling practices, and validation frameworks for use across business units and product generations.
• Serve as a senior technical authority on technologies including heat sinks, vapor chambers, heat pipes, fan and airflow systems, cold plates, manifold architectures, immersion cooling, coolant distribution systems, facility water integration, and emerging two-phase cooling solutions.
• Lead early-stage technology investigations, proof-of-concept development, feasibility studies, competitive benchmarking, and technology readiness assessments.
• Evaluate thermal implications of future silicon, optics, packaging, power delivery, rack-scale architectures, and AI infrastructure trends, and develop cooling strategies to meet next-generation performance requirements.
• Define technical requirements and assessment criteria for cooling technologies, including thermal performance, airflow management, coolant flow distribution, reliability, energy efficiency, sustainability, serviceability, manufacturability, acoustic performance, and total cost of ownership.
• Review critical product architectures and provide expert guidance on thermal design tradeoffs, risk mitigation, and technology selection.
• Evaluate strategic suppliers, development partners, universities, startups, and technology providers for innovations applicable to future HPE platforms.
• Mentor thermal engineers and help develop the next generation of technical leaders within HPE.

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits supporting physical, financial, and emotional wellbeing.
• Career development programs to help employees reach career goals, become subject-matter experts, or apply their skills in another division.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior