Senior Thermal Engineer

You will design and iterate on heat exchangers, translating OEM specifications into novel concepts and turning them into simulation-backed designs and validated hardware. This role rewards engineers who are excited by invention: developing new architectures, challenging defaults, and making principled trade-offs when reality disagrees with a model. You’ll work closely with product leads and OEM manufacturing partners, using Phasic’s AI-driven design process to explore the design space quickly and intelligently.

In the first 6 to 12 months, success means creating new HX solutions (and improving existing ones) that hit aggressive thermal and pressure-drop targets and hold up in real-world testing and certification.

• Translate OEM specifications into heat exchanger concepts and detailed geometries, then iterate quickly toward performance and manufacturability targets.
• Use both 1D/first-principles models and high-fidelity 3D CFD simulation to make design decisions (not just generate reports) and communicate trade-offs clearly.
• Leverage Phasic’s AI-driven design process to explore the design space, generate candidates, and converge on novel solutions.
• Design with additive manufacturing constraints in mind (powder removal, support strategy, distortion, post-processing), and partner closely with manufacturing to ensure concepts can become reliable hardware.
• Work with OEM manufacturing partners and internal product leads to align on requirements, constraints, and the “definition of done” for each design.
• Close the loop between simulation and physical testing by planning validation, interpreting results, and improving models/design rules when they diverge.
• Build reusable tools and artifacts (simulation setups, parameterized studies, design guidelines, validation datasets) that increase the team’s speed and quality over time.

• Masters or greater in Mechanical Engineering, Thermal Engineering, or a related field with a concentration in thermal-fluid sciences (waste heat recovery or similar backgrounds are a plus).
• 5+ years of hands-on experience designing heat exchangers, cold plates, or thermal management hardware; not just analyzing other people’s designs, but creating and iterating on geometry and standing behind performance outcomes.
• Experience building first-principles 1D heat-exchanger models (MATLAB, EES, or Python) to support early-stage thermal design and performance assessment.
• Demonstrated proficiency in CFD and thermal simulation/optimization tools (STAR-CCM+, Ansys Fluent, COMSOL, OpenFOAM or equivalent); you should be able to set up conjugate heat transfer problems for single phase and two phase flow regimes and have excellent understanding of CFD solvers. Integrating optimization with CFD workflows is essential.
• Working knowledge of at least one CAD environment (Solid Works, Siemens NX, or similar) and comfort designing internal flow passages and complex 3D geometries. Proficiency in surface modelling is a plus.
• Experience with physical thermal testing, including instrumenting experiments, collecting data, and using the results to validate or challenge simulation outputs. This should include basic instrument calibration and uncertainty/error analysis. Experience using test data to calibrate CFD models is essential.
• Clear, direct communication; you can explain a thermal trade-off to a non-thermal engineer and hold your ground when the data supports it.
• Ability to make progress in ambiguous environments by rapidly defining assumptions, proposing initial solutions, and iterating based on feedback or new data.

• Experience with metal additive manufacturing (L-PBF, SLM, DED, or binder jetting), especially designing parts that…