Senior Thermal Engineer, Lunar
About The Position
Vast is seeking a Senior Thermal Engineer to own thermal architecture and analysis for lunar surface elements, including a surface power station and a crewed habitat, airlock, and node designed to survive and operate through the full lunar diurnal cycle. Reporting to the SVP, Lunar Programs, this founding member of the Lunar team will lead thermal control for hardware destined for the lunar surface, from early architecture trades through model correlation and flight. The role will help establish the thermal design standards, margin policy, and lunar environment definitions for Vast’s lunar hardware. The engineer will define, analyze, and qualify thermal systems and components, including radiators, fluid loops, heat pipes, MLI, coatings, and survival heating. The work includes detailed system thermal modeling, component temperature budgets across mission phases and off-nominal conditions, and planning and execution of thermal vacuum and thermal balance test campaigns. The position also supports design reviews, drawing checks, and NASA technical deliverables. This is a full-time, exempt position located in Vast’s Long Beach, California location. The role may require evening or weekend work for critical mission milestones and travel of up to 5% for customer meetings.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Physics, or a related technical discipline.
- At least 6 years of spacecraft or aerospace thermal engineering experience.
- Spacecraft thermal control design and analysis experience.
- Experience building and correlating thermal models for flight hardware.
- Experience with extreme-environment or wide-swing thermal design in which both hot and cold cases drive design.
- Familiarity with thermal coatings, MLI, radiators, heat pipes, thermal straps, and heater/thermostat design.
- Comfort working during early architecture phases.
- Experience with multiple thermal analysis tools, such as Thermal Desktop, SINDA/FLUINT, ESATAN, or equivalent.
- Willingness to work evenings and/or weekends to support critical mission milestones.
- Ability to travel up to 5% of the time for customer meetings.
Nice To Haves
- TVAC and thermal balance test planning and execution experience.
- Lunar or planetary surface thermal experience, including diurnal survival design, thermal switches, and regolith conduction modeling.
- Crewed vehicle thermal experience, including cabin ATCS, condensing heat exchangers, humidity control, ECLSS thermal interfaces, or touch-temperature compliance for human-rated hardware.
- Airlock, EVA systems, or suit thermal experience, including depressurization/repressurization thermal transients.
- Pumped fluid loop design experience, including working-fluid selection, pump and accumulator sizing, freeze protection, and loop control.
- Familiarity with lunar dust effects on thermo-optical properties and dust mitigation strategies.
Responsibilities
- Define thermal control architecture for lunar surface elements, trading passive, heat-pipe, pumped-fluid-loop, and thermal-storage approaches against mass, power, complexity, and dust exposure.
- Size and place radiators for the lunar environment, accounting for diurnal sink temperature swings, albedo and lunar infrared loading, terrain and self-view blockage, and latitude-driven constraints.
- Own lunar-night survival thermal design, including heater power budgets, thermal mass and phase-change storage strategies, and dormancy and wake-up thermal states.
- Own thermal control for the habitat, airlock, and node, including cabin temperature and humidity control, condensing heat exchangers, coolant-loop architecture, and depressurization/repressurization thermal transients.
- Build and maintain detailed system thermal models, contribute reduced-order models to Vast’s design and simulation efforts, and validate against Thermal Desktop, SINDA/FLUINT, or equivalent tools.
- Own the thermal budget, tracking minimum and maximum predicted component temperatures against qualification limits across launch, cruise, descent, landed day, landed night, and off-nominal conditions.
- Select thermal coatings, MLI, heat pipes, thermal straps, isolators, heaters, and RTDs for the lunar environment, accounting for regolith dust deposition, abrasion, and UV degradation of end-of-life optical properties.
- Plan and execute TVAC and thermal balance test campaigns, including chamber and shroud requirements, solar and infrared simulation, cold-case survival demonstration, test profiles, and success criteria; correlate models to test data.
- Establish thermal design standards, margin policy, and lunar environment definitions for Vast’s lunar hardware.
- Support design reviews, drawing checks, and NASA technical deliverables.
- Work evenings and/or weekends as needed to support critical mission milestones.
- Travel up to 5% of the time to support customer meetings.
Benefits
- Company equity for full-time employees.
- Medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents.
- Generous paid time off, including up to 20+ vacation days for exempt staff, with the ability to cash out unused vacation annually.
- Paid parental leave.
- Short- and long-term disability insurance.
- Life insurance.
- Access to a 401(k) retirement plan.
- ClassPass credits.
- Personalized mental healthcare through Spring Health.
- Other discounts and perks.
- Free snacks, drip coffee, cold drinks, and dinner meals; subsidized lunch.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
