Senior Thermal Fluids Analyst

Antares • Los Angeles, CA

2d • $150,000 - $190,000 • Onsite

About The Position

Antares is developing mass-producible, inherently safe, deployable microreactors for terrestrial, underwater, and space applications. The Senior Thermal Fluids Analyst builds and runs thermal-fluid models of components and subsystems throughout the reactor core and power conversion system to assess whether designs meet thermal, mechanical, operational, and performance requirements in the extreme environments of the R1 microreactor. The analyst provides modeling expertise and iterative design feedback to design engineers, supporting optimization and design-for-manufacturing practices at a rapid development pace.

The role collaborates closely with testing and analysis teams, including support before, during, and after test campaigns. This can include planning test goals, selecting instrumentation, investigating failures, reviewing test data, and validating or anchoring models. The analyst also documents results and communicates assumptions and limitations to company stakeholders and external customers, develops tools and calculators for other engineers, and provides technical mentorship.

The position is based at Antares’ 322,000-square-foot facility in Torrance, California. The company emphasizes in-person collaboration and may require long hours and weekend work to support critical milestones. Applicants must meet U.S. export-control eligibility requirements or be eligible to obtain required authorizations.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a similar technical discipline.
• At least 5 years of experience performing thermal-fluid analysis.
• Experience building and running CFD models with commercial codes such as Fluent, CFX, or Star-CCM+, including conjugate heat transfer models and compressible equations of state.
• Experience using CAD software for design modification and model defeaturing, such as Siemens NX or similar.
• Experience with Python, MATLAB, VBA, or another scripting language for building and maintaining tools and calculators.
• Ability to work long hours and weekends as necessary to support critical milestones.
• Must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. lawful permanent resident, qualifying refugee or asylee, or eligible to obtain required U.S. Department of State authorizations, to meet export-control requirements.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a similar technical discipline.
• Familiarity with 1-D fluid network tools such as Flownex, Sinda-Fluint, or RELAP5.
• Participation in regulatory qualification or certification programs for safety-critical systems in the aerospace or nuclear industry.
• Understanding and experience implementing numerical methods to solve fluid-dynamic and thermodynamic systems.
• Experience with multiphase fluid and heat-transport systems, such as heat pipes, Rankine cycle engines, or saturated cryogenic storage.
• Familiarity with ASME BPVC Section III Division 5.
• Experience building and running finite element analysis models.
• Comfort working in a fast-paced environment with rapid design iteration loops.

Responsibilities

• Assess subcomponent designs for pressure drop, heat-transfer capabilities, and other performance characteristics using hand calculations, in-house tools, and CFD.
• Collaborate with designers and responsible engineers on initial sizing, material selection, and design feedback based on analytical results.
• Document analytical results and communicate key findings, assumptions, and limitations to internal stakeholders and external customers.
• Support test engineers with test design, instrumentation selection, and data review to ensure campaigns provide data needed to validate models.
• Develop internal tools and calculators that allow engineers to assess designs without detailed finite element models.
• Provide technical mentorship and guidance to engineers and across teams.

What This Job Offers

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