Senior Spacecraft Thermal Engineer for Optical Payloads

Space Dynamics Laboratory; Logan (UT); Hybrid; USD 102,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Space Dynamics Laboratory in Utah seeks an experienced Engineer to develop, analyze, integrate, and verify thermal-control solutions for NASA and DoD satellites and precision optical payloads, from low Earth orbit to planetary missions.

The engineer will support concept development, thermal architecture trades, PDR/CDR, flight-hardware build and TVAC testing, and flight delivery, with potential to lead thermal or mechanical projects and assist proposals.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in mechanical or aerospace engineering.
• At least five years of relevant thermal engineering experience.
• Experience with spacecraft/spaceflight payload thermal design and analysis including steady-state and transient modeling.
• Experience with formal reviews such as PDR/CDR and associated verification products.
• Experience planning or executing thermal-vacuum or thermal-balance tests of aerospace hardware.
• U.S. citizen and able to obtain a U.S. Government security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Owns or contributes to spacecraft and optical-payload thermal architectures, requirements, interfaces, and hardware selection.
• Develops and documents steady-state and transient thermal models and evaluates environments, temperatures, gradients, and design margins.
• Prepares analyses, verification matrices, design-review packages, and presentations for SRR, PDR, CDR, and test readiness reviews.
• Collaborates with mechanical, optical, electrical, and systems teams to translate analyses into flight designs and resolve thermal interfaces.
• Plans and supports TVAC tests, instrumentation, procedures, data reduction, and model correlation.
• Mentors less-experienced engineers and provides technical judgments on margins and verification.

Skills

Cross-disciplinary collaboration

Analytical thinking

Problem solving

Communication of results

Mentoring engineers

Education

Bachelor’s degree in mechanical or aerospace engineering

Master’s degree in mechanical or aerospace engineering

Tools

Thermal Desktop

SINDA

FLUINT

Python

MATLAB

Job description

Space Dynamics Laboratory in Utah seeks an experienced Engineer to develop, analyze, integrate, and verify thermal-control solutions for NASA and DoD satellites and precision optical payloads, from low Earth orbit to planetary missions.

The engineer will support concept development, thermal architecture trades, PDR/CDR, flight-hardware build and TVAC testing, and flight delivery, with potential to lead thermal or mechanical projects and assist proposals.