Hypersonic TPS Engineer | Ablation & CFD Expert

Anduril Industries; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 129,000 - 171,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity grants

Excellent health benefits

Job summary

Anduril Industries is seeking a Thermal Engineer specializing in Thermal Protection Systems to own design, analysis, and validation for TPS on hypersonic and high-speed flight systems, operating in extreme aerothermal environments.

You will build thermal models from hand calculations to CFD/FEA, select TPS materials like carbon phenolic, PICA, ceramics, and work with cross-functional teams to balance mass and performance.

Qualifications

• MS or PhD in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Applied Physics, or a related field with aerothermodynamics, heat transfer, thermal sciences, or materials science.
• 2+ years of TPS design, aerothermal analysis, or high-temperature material response experience.
• Strong first-principles understanding of aerodynamic heating 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 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 correlations, boundary-layer methods, and CFD to define the thermal environment across trajectories.
• Conduct ablation and material response modeling to predict TPS recession and thermal margins.
• Evaluate and select TPS materials (carbon phenolic, PICA, silicone-based ablators, ceramics, high-temperature composites).
• Partner with aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, and systems engineers to integrate TPS into vehicle design while balancing mass and performance.
• Define and execute thermal and material characterization tests (arcjet, furnace, flight-article tests).
• Build and maintain thermal models from hand calculations to detailed FEA/CFD to predict performance and design limits.
• Present TPS status, risks, tradeoffs, and recommendations in design reviews and customer-facing reviews.
• Support failure reviews and root-cause investigations using data and first-principles reasoning.

Skills

Thermal analysis

Ablation modeling

First-principles heat transfer

Hypersonic thermodynamics

MATLAB/Python

Team collaboration

Education

MS or PhD in Aerospace/Mechanical Engineering or Applied Physics with aerothermodynamics focus

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 own design, analysis, and validation for TPS on hypersonic and high-speed flight systems, operating in extreme aerothermal environments.

You will build thermal models from hand calculations to CFD/FEA, select TPS materials like carbon phenolic, PICA, ceramics, and work with cross-functional teams to balance mass and performance.