Senior Thermal Engineer — Defense Hardware & CFD/FEA

Anduril Industries, Inc.; Costa Mesa (CA); On-site; USD 146,000 - 194,000; Full time

Job summary

Anduril Industries, Inc. in Costa Mesa, CA is seeking a Senior Thermal Engineer to own thermal design and analysis for advanced defense hardware across drones, aircraft, missiles, and related flight systems.

You will apply heat transfer and CFD/FEA methods, balancing hand calculations with detailed simulations to guide fast design decisions, while collaborating with electrical, mechanical, aerospace, software, and systems engineers.

Qualifications

• MS or PhD in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Applied Physics, or related field with focus on heat transfer, fluid dynamics, thermal sciences, or thermal systems.
• 5+ years of experience designing, analyzing, or validating thermal systems for integrated hardware products.
• Strong first-principles understanding of heat transfer and fluid dynamics (conduction, convection, radiation, fluid flow, transient behavior).
• Experience supporting thermal design for aerospace, aircraft, rocket, missile, UAV, defense, or other high-performance hardware.
• Experience using thermal analysis, modeling, simulation, and/or physical test data to drive design decisions for passive or active thermal management.
• Ability to communicate technical tradeoffs clearly across engineering, program and customer stakeholders, and ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Top Secret security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Own thermal design and analysis for integrated hardware products, including drones, aircraft, missiles, or related defense systems.
• Use first-principles engineering judgment to determine the right level of analysis for each design decision, including hand calculations, spreadsheets, MATLAB / Python models, FEA, and CFD.
• Define thermal architectures that can withstand rugged environments, demanding flight envelopes, and operational edge cases, including hot, cold, transient, and mission-specific thermal conditions.
• Partner with electrical, mechanical, aerospace, software, and systems engineers to document power dissipation, operating modes, thermal constraints, and design tradeoffs.
• Build and maintain thermal FEA / CFD models to predict system performance, establish design limits, and define red / yellow operating thresholds for test and field use.
• Define and execute prototype builds and thermal tests, including CAD support, sensor selection, DAQ setup, data post-processing, and results documentation.
• Present thermal status, risks, tradeoffs, timelines, and recommendations in internal design reviews and customer-facing technical reviews.
• Develop internal tools, workflows, or analysis methods that improve speed, consistency, and quality of thermal decision-making.
• Support failure reviews and root-cause investigations using test data, thermal analysis, and first-principles reasoning.

Skills

Heat transfer

Fluid dynamics

First-principles reasoning

Thermal modeling

Communication

Education

MS or PhD in Mechanical Engineering / Aerospace Engineering / Applied Physics

Tools

STAR-CCM+

ANSYS

Icepak

Flotherm

SolidWorks

Siemens NX

Job description

Anduril Industries, Inc. in Costa Mesa, CA is seeking a Senior Thermal Engineer to own thermal design and analysis for advanced defense hardware across drones, aircraft, missiles, and related flight systems.

You will apply heat transfer and CFD/FEA methods, balancing hand calculations with detailed simulations to guide fast design decisions, while collaborating with electrical, mechanical, aerospace, software, and systems engineers.