Senior Thermal Engineer

Critical Energy • Hawthorne, CA

9d • Onsite

About The Position

This is a full-time, in-person role for a Principal/Senior Thermal Analyst. The role will be responsible for developing and validating thermal models that are critical to the design and operation of our thermoelectric power plant hardware. This role will work side-by-side with mechanical, fluids, and power electronics engineers to develop novel thermal systems from the ground up. The team is focused on rapid prototyping, testing, and iterative improvement of real hardware, with strong alignment between analysis and build.

Requirements

• Master’s or PhD in Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Aerospace Engineering, Chemical Engineering, or a related discipline with a focus on thermal sciences or thermofluids.
• Demonstrated experience building and validating thermal/fluid models from first principles.
• Strong background in both numerical modeling and experimental testing.
• Hands-on experience working directly with hardware (thermal systems, test rigs, sensors, etc.).
• Solid understanding of fluid mechanics, heat transfer, and thermodynamics.
• Experience with numerical methods for solving heat and mass transport equations (1D/2D modeling).
• Experience translating model results to guide hardware development.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills
• Good communication and team-working skills
• Highly self-motivated

Nice To Haves

• Experience across multiple industries/applications (aerospace, automotive, power generation, etc.).
• Familiarity with CFD tools such as ANSYS Fluent, STAR-CCM+, COMSOL, Thermal Desktop, or similar.
• Experience designing or analyzing air-cooled and fluid-based heat exchangers.
• Prior work involving thermal systems in power generation or energy applications.
• Familiarity with thermal design for transient and steady-state regimes.
• Understanding of thermal interactions with electrical and mechanical systems.

Responsibilities

• Developing 0D thermofluidic system models using first-principles correlations to estimate bulk performance.
• Building and implementing 1D and 2D numerical models from scratch to analyze component and system-level thermal behavior.
• Validating thermal models through experimental testing and hardware correlation.
• Performing trade studies and sensitivity analyses to guide thermal design decisions.
• Working closely with design engineers to provide performance input and influence hardware architecture.
• Translating analytical and simulation results into actionable design recommendations across hardware, fluids, structural, and power engineering domains.
• Supporting the design and analysis of heat exchangers, coolers, and other thermofluidic components.

What This Job Offers

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