TPS Thermal Engineer: Hypersonic Flight & Ablation Expert

Anduril-1; Costa Mesa (CA); On-site; USD 129,000 - 171,000; Full time

Job summary

Anduril Industries is seeking a Thermal Engineer specializing in Thermal Protection Systems (TPS) to own the design, analysis, and validation of thermal protection for hypersonic and high-speed flight systems operating in extreme aerothermal environments.

You will guide design decisions across first-principles calculations, material response modeling, and CFD, ensuring TPS survival under demanding mission conditions and collaborating with cross-functional teams across aerodynamics and structures.

Qualifications

• MS or PhD in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Applied Physics, or a related field with a focus on aerothermodynamics, heat transfer, thermal sciences, or materials science.
• 2+ years of TPS design, aerothermal analysis, or high-temperature material response for aerospace or defense systems.
• Strong first-principles understanding of aerodynamic heating, ablation, high-temperature heat transfer, and material thermal response.
• Experience with material response modeling tools such as FIAT, CMA, TITAN, or equivalent ablation/thermal response codes.
• Experience supporting thermal design for hypersonic vehicles, reentry systems, missiles, rocket nozzles, or other systems operating in extreme aerothermal environments.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Top Secret security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Own TPS design, material selection, and thermal analysis for hypersonic and high-speed flight vehicles, including missiles, reentry systems, and advanced flight platforms.
• Perform aerothermal heating analysis using engineering correlations, boundary-layer methods, and CFD to define the thermal environment across flight trajectories.
• Conduct ablation and material response modeling to predict TPS recession, in-depth thermal response, and structural thermal margins under mission-representative conditions.
• Evaluate and select TPS materials, including carbon phenolic, PICA, silicone-based ablators, ceramics, and high-temperature composites, based on aerothermal loads, mass constraints, and manufacturability.
• Partner with aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, and systems engineers to integrate TPS into vehicle design while managing mass, volume, and performance tradeoffs.
• Define and execute thermal and material characterization tests, including arcjet testing, furnace testing, and instrumented flight-article thermal testing.
• Build and maintain thermal models spanning hand calculations through detailed FEA/CFD to predict system performance, establish design limits, and support qualification.
• Present TPS status, risks, tradeoffs, and recommendations in internal design reviews and customer-facing technical reviews.
• Support failure reviews and root-cause investigations using test data, thermal analysis, and first-principles reasoning.

Skills

TPS design

Aerothermal analysis

High-temperature materials

First-principles analysis

Hypersonic vehicle design

Education

MS or PhD in Aerospace/Mechanical Engineering or related field

Tools

FIAT

CMA

TITAN

DPLR

US3D

Loci-CHEM

CFD++

ANSYS Fluent

STAR-CCM+

NEQAIR

HARA

Job description

Anduril Industries is seeking a Thermal Engineer specializing in Thermal Protection Systems (TPS) to own the design, analysis, and validation of thermal protection for hypersonic and high-speed flight systems operating in extreme aerothermal environments.

You will guide design decisions across first-principles calculations, material response modeling, and CFD, ensuring TPS survival under demanding mission conditions and collaborating with cross-functional teams across aerodynamics and structures.