Thermal Systems Engineer
About The Position
Industrial steam is crucial for manufacturing across various sectors like breweries, dairies, pharmaceuticals, and specialty chemicals. However, current boiler technology is outdated, facing challenges with volatile fuel costs, stricter emission limits, and capacity constraints. Boiler 2.0 offers a solution: a modular heat pump that generates steam up to 185°C using only electricity and air. This technology is significantly more efficient than traditional combustion methods, returning approximately two units of steam energy per unit of electricity. It's designed to fit existing boiler footprints and scale by adding modules, eliminating the need for stacks, fuel lines, and combustion permits. Units are currently in production in Loveland, Colorado. The engineering for this system is demanding, involving high pressure ratios, novel compressor and refrigerant choices, and complex two-phase heat transfer across a wide operating range. The company is transitioning a working product into volume production, and the thermal architecture established in the next two years will be foundational for all future units. This role offers the opportunity to own a significant part of that development.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, or a related discipline, and relevant experience at the level you are applying for (5 / 8 / 12+ years as above).
- Strong command of thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluid mechanics — and the ability to tell when the model is lying to you.
- Demonstrated experience designing, testing, and troubleshooting thermal-fluid systems in hardware, not only in simulation.
- Experience developing and executing engineering test programs, including instrumentation and data acquisition for thermal-fluid equipment.
- Fluency with system modeling and analysis tools such as EES, Aspen Plus/HYSYS, MATLAB, Simulink, GT-SUITE, HTRI, or Python.
- Experience producing the documentation that engineering decisions live in: specifications, P&IDs, and test procedures.
- Comfort with the ambiguity and pace of a startup building physical hardware, where the answer is often that nobody has one yet.
Nice To Haves
- Detailed heat exchanger design, selection, and qualification experience — shell-and-tube, plate-and-frame, brazed plate, or refrigerant heat exchangers — using HTRI or equivalent. Manufacturing exposure is a real plus.
- Experience with industrial heat pumps, refrigeration, ORC, steam systems, turbomachinery, or comparable industrial thermal equipment, ideally at an OEM or supplier.
- Experience developing controls architectures, operating sequences, alarms, and protection strategies for complex systems.
- Experience taking hardware through commercialization and production scale-up.
- Experience leading DFMEA, design reviews, and risk reduction on multidisciplinary programs.
- Experience commissioning and troubleshooting complex thermal systems in the field.
- Experience qualifying engineered components with external suppliers.
- A graduate degree in a relevant field, or patents you helped develop.
Responsibilities
- Own thermal system architecture
- Define operating envelopes, control strategies, and system architectures for next-generation Boiler 2.0 products, using modeling, test data, and engineering judgment in roughly equal measure.
- Lead component selection, sizing, and integration across heat exchangers, compressors, valves, pumps, and supporting equipment — including the supplier conversations that make those choices real.
- Own the engineering documentation that holds the design together: P&IDs, system specifications, and design requirements.
- Find and drive the performance, reliability, and cost-reduction opportunities that matter most at our production volumes.
- Integrate controls and instrumentation
- Work with our controls engineers to develop operating sequences, fault protection, interlocks, and system control philosophy.
- Define instrumentation and data acquisition requirements for prototype, pilot, and production systems — then use what those sensors tell you to improve the system.
- Test, validate, and learn
- Lead test plans, validation protocols, and acceptance criteria, then plan and execute the lab, prototype, pilot, and field testing behind them.
- Analyze performance data to find root causes, confirm or kill design assumptions, and feed the result back into the product.
- Support commissioning and troubleshooting of development and field systems. Expect occasional travel to customer sites and suppliers.
- Mature the product
- Lead DFMEA and technical risk reduction, and carry design reviews and gate reviews through to closed action items.
- Identify patentable inventions and help turn them into invention disclosures and filings.
Benefits
- Medical, dental, and vision coverage
- Retirement plan and any match
- Paid time off and holidays
- Parental leave
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
