Senior Thermal Engineering Lead: Liquid & Air Cooling

Cisco Systems; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 163,000 - 205,000; Full time

Job summary

Cisco Systems, based in San Jose, seeks a Thermal Engineering Technical Leader to drive product-level cooling solutions for high-performance networking and compute platforms. You will own design, simulation, validation, and production readiness for liquid and air cooling, coordinating with suppliers and internal teams to ensure scalable, robust thermal performance.

The role emphasizes CFD, data-driven validation, and a hands-on approach to optimize cold plates, CDUs, heat sinks, and vapor

Qualifications

• BS in Material Science, Mechanical, or Chemical Engineering (MS preferred) or related.
• 8+ years of experience in thermal/mechanical design for electronics.
• Direct experience with liquid cooling systems: cold plates, manifolds, pumps, CDUs.
• Strong working knowledge of air-cooled solutions: heat pipes, vapor chambers, TIMs.
• Hands-on validation and troubleshooting with thermal data acquisition tools.
• Proficient in CFD and simulation-to-test correlation.
• Quick learner, adaptive in learning through sensing and academic research.

Responsibilities

• Lead design, simulation, validation, and production readiness of product-level thermal solutions (liquid and air-cooled).
• Own modeling, simulation, thermal testing, and performance validation workflows with suppliers, ODMs, and internal teams.
• Define design parameters, correlate physical testing with models, and collaborate with hardware design teams to roadmap thermal strategies.
• Contribute to cross-functional efforts to improve qualification and specification standards and drive innovation.

Skills

Thermal design

Liquid cooling

CFD

Thermal testing

Data acquisition

Sim-to-test

Rapid learning

Education

BS in Materials/Mechanical/Chemical Eng

MS preferred

Tools

CFD software

Job description

Cisco Systems, based in San Jose, seeks a Thermal Engineering Technical Leader to drive product-level cooling solutions for high-performance networking and compute platforms. You will own design, simulation, validation, and production readiness for liquid and air cooling, coordinating with suppliers and internal teams to ensure scalable, robust thermal performance.

The role emphasizes CFD, data-driven validation, and a hands-on approach to optimize cold plates, CDUs, heat sinks, and vapor