Staff Thermal Systems Architect - Robotics Platform

Rhoda AI; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Rhoda AI is seeking a Staff Thermal Systems Integration Engineer to own thermal management across our robot platform. You will define system-level thermal architecture, develop detailed simulations, and validate cooling strategies in collaboration with Hardware, Controls, and Safety teams.

You will drive thermal requirements from concept through verification, ensuring reliability, uptime, and safe operation in diverse environments.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of thermal systems analysis experience including heat transfer and cooling design.
• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering or closely related field.
• Hands-on experience with thermal simulation tools for heat loading and cooling strategies.
• Strong ability to reason across mechanical, electrical, and control layers for integrated thermal solutions.
• Experience decomposing system-level requirements into component specs.
• Proven cross-functional collaboration across Hardware, Controls, Safety, and Product teams.

Responsibilities

• Develop system-level thermal requirements and decompose them to subsystems.
• Collaborate with Hardware sub-teams to optimize cooling device placement and sizing.
• Create detailed thermal simulations and validate designs across operating environments.
• Work with Controls to develop thermal management algorithms and safety integrations.
• Document thermal specs, analyses, and test plans for traceability.
• Provide guidance on thermal design principles and best practices.

Skills

Thermal systems analysis

Heat transfer

Thermal modeling

Cooling design

Cross-functional collaboration

System-level thinking

Thermal simulations

Root-cause analysis

Education

Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering

Tools

ANSYS Fluent

COMSOL

OpenFOAM

MATLAB/Simulink

Python

Job description

At Rhoda AI, we’re building the next generation of generalist intelligent robots. We own the full robotics stack from high-performance hardware and robot systems to the infrastructure and state-of-the-art foundation world models that control our robots. Our robots are designed to be generalists capable of operating in complex, real-world environments and handling long-tail edge cases, made possible by our cutting edge research and end-to-end system design. We've raised over $450M and are investing aggressively in model research, infrastructure, hardware development, and manufacturing scale-up to make generalist robotics a reality.

The Role

We're looking for a Staff Thermal Systems Integration Engineer to own thermal management across our entire robot platform. This role spans system-level thermal architecture, detailed thermal modeling and simulation, integration with mechanical design, coordination with controls on thermal management strategies, and validation across diverse operating environments. You'll work at the intersection of hardware design, control systems, and safety—defining thermal requirements, ensuring cooling solutions are architected correctly, and proving through simulation and test that the system meets reliability and uptime targets. This is a highly cross-functional role requiring deep collaboration with Hardware, Software, Controls, Systems Integration, Safety, and Product teams.

What You'll Do

• Develop system-level thermal requirements and decompose to subsystems and components; own thermal management of the entire robot platform including all cooling devices, thermal paths, and heat dissipation strategies.

• Partner with Hardware sub-teams (structures, actuators, electrical) from design review and release, ensuring thermal requirements are met in implementation and cooling device placement and sizing are optimized.

• Create detailed thermal simulations (including computational fluid dynamics where appropriate) to validate designs; lead thermal verification across diverse operating environments and use cases against reliability and uptime targets.

• Collaborate with Control Engineers to develop thermal management algorithms, derating, and shutdown strategies; work with Safety Engineers to integrate thermal constraints into system safety analyses and ensure correct behavior implementation.

• Validate subsystem and robot-level thermal performance, documenting thermal specifications, analyses, simulation results, and verification test plans for regulatory and design review traceability.

• Provide technical guidance on thermal design principles, best practices, and lessons learned to support the organization in thermally sound decision-making.

What We're Looking For

• At least 10 years of related experience of thermal systems analysis, including heat transfer principles, thermal modeling, and cooling device design and selection.

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, or closely related engineering discipline.

• Hands-on experience with thermal simulation tools for simulating heat loading and validating the impact of cooling devices and thermal management strategies.

• Strong systems-thinking: ability to reason across mechanical, electrical, and control layers to identify thermal constraints and optimize integrated thermal solutions.

• Experience decomposing system-level thermal requirements into component and subsystem specifications.

• Proven ability to work cross-functionally with Hardware, Controls, Safety, and Product teams to drive alignment on thermal architecture and constraints.

• Strong troubleshooting and root-cause analysis instincts for thermal issues—you follow the evidence and push until you understand the real problem.

• Excellent communication skills; comfortable engaging Hardware, Controls, Safety, Systems Integration, and Product stakeholders as peers and translating between disciplines.

Nice to Have

• Experience with mainstream CFD tools (ANSYS Fluent, COMSOL, OpenFOAM, or similar) and advanced thermal simulation techniques.

• Proficiency in MATLAB / Simulink for thermal modeling, control algorithm development, or co-simulation environments.

• Experience with Python for thermal data analysis, automation, or custom tooling.

• Exposure to functional safety standards (ISO 26262, IEC 61508) and regulated product development.

• Experience with requirements management and traceability tooling (Flow, DOORS, Jama, Polarion, or similar).

• Background in robotics, embedded systems, or high-performance hardware platforms.

• Prior experience supporting products in the field and turning field-observed thermal issues into durable engineering improvements.