Thermal Engineer — Defense Hardware CFD/FEA Expert

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

Job summary

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

The role requires deep heat transfer and fluid dynamics fundamentals, hands-on modeling from hand calculations to CFD/FEA, and close collaboration with electrical, mechanical, aerospace, software, and systems engineers. U.S. Top Secret clearance is required.

Qualifications

• MS or PhD in Mechanical, Aerospace, or related field with heat transfer focus.
• 5+ years designing, analyzing, or validating thermal systems for integrated hardware products.
• Strong first-principles understanding of heat transfer and fluid dynamics.
• Experience supporting thermal design for aerospace, aircraft, rocket, missile, UAV, defense, or other high‑performance hardware systems.
• Experience using thermal analysis, modeling, simulation, and/or physical test data to drive design decisions for passive or active thermal management systems.
• 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 fundamentals

Fluid dynamics fundamentals

First-principles reasoning

Thermal design experience

Communication of tradeoffs

US Top Secret clearance

Education

MS or PhD in Mechanical/Aerospace/Applied Physics

Tools

STAR-CCM+

ANSYS

Icepak

Flotherm

SolidWorks

Siemens NX

Job description

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

The role requires deep heat transfer and fluid dynamics fundamentals, hands-on modeling from hand calculations to CFD/FEA, and close collaboration with electrical, mechanical, aerospace, software, and systems engineers. U.S. Top Secret clearance is required.