Senior Thermal Engineer | Remote Opportunity | Fastwater Staffing

📍 Location: Costa Mesa, California
📄 Employment Type: Contract-to-Perm
🏢 Work Arrangement: Remote Opportunity for Top Candidates
🚀 Start Date: TBD
💰 Compensation: TBD — based on skills and experience

Important Screening Requirements

• Remote opportunity is open to qualified candidates within the United States.
• Relocation assistance is available to qualified candidates from other countries.
• 5+ years of experience designing, analyzing, or validating thermal systems for integrated hardware products.
• MS or PhD in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Applied Physics, or a related field, with a focus on heat transfer, fluid dynamics, thermal sciences, or thermal systems.
• 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.
• Experience with thermal analysis, modeling, simulation, and/or physical test data.
• Ability to communicate technical tradeoffs across engineering, program, and customer stakeholders.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Top Secret security clearance, where required.

About the Role

We are seeking a Senior Thermal Engineer to own thermal design and analysis for advanced defense hardware across drones, aircraft, missiles, and related flight systems.

This role is ideal for an engineer with deep expertise in heat transfer and fluid dynamics, strong thermal analysis capabilities, and the engineering judgment to select the appropriate level of analysis—from first-order hand calculations through detailed FEA and CFD—to support rapid and effective design decisions.

You will work across multidisciplinary engineering teams to develop thermal architectures, evaluate system performance, support prototype testing, and drive thermal design decisions for demanding operating environments.

What We’re Looking For

We’re looking for a senior thermal engineer who can take ownership of thermal engineering from early design and analysis through testing and validation.

The ideal candidate combines strong fundamentals in heat transfer and fluid dynamics with hands-on experience applying thermal analysis to complex, high-performance hardware. You should be comfortable working across disciplines, making engineering tradeoffs, troubleshooting thermal issues, and communicating technical recommendations to both engineering and customer stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

Thermal Design & Analysis

• Own thermal design and analysis for integrated hardware products, including drones, aircraft, missiles, and related defense systems.
• Apply first-principles engineering judgment to determine the appropriate level of analysis for each design decision, including:
  • Hand calculations
  • Spreadsheets
  • MATLAB/Python models
  • FEA
  • CFD
• Define thermal architectures capable of operating in rugged environments and demanding flight envelopes.
• Evaluate hot, cold, transient, and mission-specific thermal conditions.

Cross-Functional Engineering

• Partner with electrical, mechanical, aerospace, software, and systems engineers to document:
  • Power dissipation
  • Operating modes
  • Thermal constraints
  • Design tradeoffs
• Build and maintain thermal FEA/CFD models to predict system performance, establish design limits, and define red/yellow operating thresholds for testing and field use.

Prototype Testing & Validation

• Define and execute prototype builds and thermal tests.
• Support CAD activities, sensor selection, DAQ setup, data post-processing, and test-result documentation.
• Use test data and thermal analysis to validate designs and support engineering decisions.

Technical Leadership & Continuous Improvement

• Present thermal status, risks, tradeoffs, timelines, and recommendations during internal design reviews and customer-facing technical reviews.
• Develop internal tools, workflows, and analysis methods that improve the speed, consistency, and quality of thermal decision-making.
• Support failure reviews and root-cause investigations using test data, thermal analysis, and first-principles engineering reasoning.

Required Qualifications

• MS or PhD in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Applied Physics, or a related field focused 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:
  • Conduction
  • Convection
  • Radiation
  • Fluid flow
  • Transient thermal behavior
• 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 clearly communicate technical tradeoffs across engineering, program, and customer stakeholders.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Top Secret security clearance, where required.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with thermal analysis tools such as:
  • STAR-CCM+
  • ANSYS
  • Icepak
  • FloTHERM
  • Comparable FEA/CFD platforms
• Experience using MATLAB, Python, spreadsheets, or similar tools for first-order thermal modeling, transient analysis, or engineering trade studies.
• Experience designing thermal hardware such as:
  • Heat sinks
  • Cold plates
  • Fans
  • Pumps
  • Heat exchangers
  • Thermal interface materials
  • Liquid cooling systems
  • Air-cooling systems
• Experience planning or executing thermal tests, including sensor selection, data acquisition, data post-processing, and correlation of test results to analysis.
• Experience with SolidWorks, Siemens NX, or comparable CAD tools.
• Experience supporting formal design reviews, customer reviews, flight testing, qualification testing, or fielded hardware.
• Experience developing reusable analysis tools, automation workflows, reduced-order models, or other methods that improve analysis speed and consistency.