Hypersonic Thermal Protection Engineer

AI Chopping Block; Seattle, Northern (WA, KY); On-site; USD 129,000 - 171,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive equity grants

Top-tier benefits

Job summary

Anduril Industries is seeking a Thermal Engineer specializing in Thermal Protection Systems to join our Thermal Engineering team. You will own the design, analysis, and validation of TPS for hypersonic and high-speed flight systems operating in extreme aerothermal environments.

You should have deep expertise in aerothermal heating, ablation, and high-temperature thermal analysis, with hands-on experience spanning from first-principles calculations to CFD.

Qualifications

• MS or PhD in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Applied Physics, or a related field with a focus on aerothermodynamics, heat transfer, thermal sciences, or materials science.
• 2+ years of experience in TPS design, aerothermal analysis, or high-temperature material response for aerospace or defense systems.
• Strong first-principles understanding of aerodynamic heating, ablation, high-temperature heat transfer, and material thermal response.
• Experience with material response modeling tools such as FIAT, CMA, TITAN, or equivalent ablation/thermal response codes.
• Experience supporting thermal design for hypersonic vehicles, reentry systems, missiles, rocket nozzles, or other systems operating in extreme aerothermal environments.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Top Secret security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Own TPS design, material selection, and thermal analysis for hypersonic and high-speed flight vehicles, including missiles and reentry systems.
• Perform aerothermal heating analysis using engineering correlations, boundary-layer methods, and CFD to define the thermal environment across flight trajectories.
• Conduct ablation and material response modeling to predict TPS recession, in-depth thermal response, and structural thermal margins under mission-representative conditions.
• Evaluate and select TPS materials, including carbon phenolic, PICA, silicone-based ablators, ceramics, and high-temperature composites, based on aerothermal loads, mass constraints, and manufacturability.
• Partner with aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, and systems engineers to integrate TPS into vehicle design while managing mass, volume, and performance tradeoffs.
• Define and execute thermal and material characterization tests, including arcjet testing, furnace testing, and instrumented flight-article thermal testing.
• Build and maintain thermal models spanning hand calculations through detailed FEA/CFD to predict system performance, establish design limits, and support qualification.
• Present TPS status, risks, tradeoffs, and recommendations in internal design reviews and customer-facing technical reviews.
• Support failure reviews and root-cause investigations using test data, thermal analysis, and first-principles reasoning.

Skills

First-principles aerothermodynamics

Ablation modeling

High-temperature heat transfer

CFD analysis

TPS design understanding

Top Secret clearance eligibility

Education

MS or PhD in Aerospace/Mechanical Engineering

Tools

FIAT

CMA

TITAN

DPLR

US3D

Loci-CHEM

CFD++

ANSYS Fluent

STAR-CCM+

Job description

Anduril Industries is seeking a Thermal Engineer specializing in Thermal Protection Systems to join our Thermal Engineering team. You will own the design, analysis, and validation of TPS for hypersonic and high-speed flight systems operating in extreme aerothermal environments.

You should have deep expertise in aerothermal heating, ablation, and high-temperature thermal analysis, with hands-on experience spanning from first-principles calculations to CFD.