Hypersonics TPS & Ablation Thermal Engineer

Anduril Industries; Costa Mesa (CA); On-site; USD 129,000 - 171,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity grants

Competitive benefits

Job summary

Anduril Industries is seeking a Thermal Engineer specializing in Thermal Protection Systems to design, analyze, and validate TPS for hypersonic and high-speed flight vehicles. You will own material selection, TPS analysis, and verification across extreme aerothermal environments, guiding fast, high-consequence design decisions.

This role collaborates across aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, and systems engineering, builds thermal models from hand calculations to CFD/FEA, and supports testing

Qualifications

• MS or PhD in Aerospace Engineering or related field with aerothermodynamics focus.
• 2+ years in TPS design or aerothermal analysis for aerospace/defense systems.
• Strong first-principles understanding of aerodynamic heating and material response.
• Experience with FIAT, CMA, TITAN or equivalent ablation/thermal codes.
• Experience supporting thermal design for hypersonic systems in extreme 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.
• Perform aerothermal heating analysis using correlations, boundary-layer methods, and CFD.
• Conduct ablation and material response modeling to predict TPS recession and margins.
• Evaluate and select TPS materials (carbon phenolic, PICA, silicone ablators, ceramics).
• Collaborate with aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, and systems engineers to integrate TPS.
• Define and execute thermal/material characterization tests (arcjet, furnace, flight testing).
• Build thermal models from hand calculations to FEA/CFD to predict performance and limits.
• Present TPS status and tradeoffs in design reviews and customer-facing reviews.
• Support failure reviews using test data and first-principles reasoning.

Skills

Aeroheating theory

Ablation modeling

Thermal analysis

Cross-functional collaboration

Mathematical practicality

Education

MS or PhD in Aerospace Engineering

Tools

FIAT

CMA

TITAN

DPLR

US3D

Loci-CHEM

CFD++

ANSYS Fluent

STAR-CCM+

MATLAB

Python

Job description

Anduril Industries is seeking a Thermal Engineer specializing in Thermal Protection Systems to design, analyze, and validate TPS for hypersonic and high-speed flight vehicles. You will own material selection, TPS analysis, and verification across extreme aerothermal environments, guiding fast, high-consequence design decisions.

This role collaborates across aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, and systems engineering, builds thermal models from hand calculations to CFD/FEA, and supports testing