Thermal Protection System; TPS Engineer

Overview

Are you passionate about human space exploration, understanding the origins of the universe, and working with a passionate and diverse team to make a difference? If you are, we need you!

We need your talent, teamwork, and energy to help us achieve great things that inspire people all over the globe. We need you to bring creative ideas and diverse backgrounds to help us envision, shape, and deliver systems that will enable the exploration of space while benefiting people here on Earth. We are excited about what we do, and we need you on our team as we take on exciting challenges for NASA’s pursuits in deep space exploration.

As NASA’s largest engineering solutions provider working together with NASA at centers across the United States.

We are looking for a
Thermal Protection System (TPS) Engineer to join our team with Barrios, a teammate company. Amentum is seeking an experienced Thermal Protection System (TPS) Engineer to support the design, analysis, development, testing, and certification of advanced TPS architectures for human‑rated and uncrewed spacecraft. In this role, you will contribute to the full lifecycle of TPS development for atmospheric entry, ascent, and on‑orbit thermal environments across a variety of space vehicles.

You will work closely with interdisciplinary engineering teams to ensure TPS designs meet mission requirements for structural integrity, thermal performance, reliability, manufacturability, and safety.

** We are actively searching for qualified candidates for this potential opening; however, we do not have assurance at this time when the position will be finalized and opened. Because we have strong reason to believe the position will be approved soon, we are proceeding with identifying qualified candidates and conducting interviews. **

The
Thermal Protection System (TPS) Engineer will:

• Support the design, analysis, and verification of ablative, reusable, and multi‑layer insulating TPS materials for spacecraft.
• Develop thermal models and perform transient/steady‑state analyses to evaluate TPS performance across mission phases.
• Conduct material trade studies, risk identification, and mitigation planning.
• Support TPS subsystem requirements development, validation, and configuration management.
• Interface with structural, aerothermal, manufacturing, and systems engineering teams to integrate TPS solutions into the vehicle design.
• Review aerothermal environment predictions and translate loads into actionable TPS design criteria.
• Participate in fabrication process development, qualification testing, and non‑destructive evaluation planning.
• Conduct laboratory and high‑temperature testing of TPS materials in support of design, development, test and evaluation.
• Plan testing and analyze results from high enthalpy test facilities (arc jet, inductively coupled plasma (ICP) torch, etc.)
• Support anomaly investigations and root‑cause analyses related to TPS performance.
• Prepare technical documentation including analysis reports, presentations, verification artifacts, and data packages.

Required Education/Experience/

Skills:

• Bachelor's degree in aerospace, mechanical, or related engineering, plus ten (10) years of related experience. License and certification may be required.
• Minimum of 5 years of engineering analysis experience related to thermal control systems.
• Experience with thermal modeling tools such as Thermal Desktop, SINDA/FLUINT, FEMAP, Abaqus, or equivalent.
• Demonstrated experience with spacecraft aerothermal environments, material characterization, and TPS design processes.
• Understanding of spacecraft certification, qualification, or verification/validation processes.
• Strong communication, documentation, and technical reasoning skills.

Preferences:

• Master's degree or PhD in a related engineering discipline.
• Experience with re‑entry vehicles, launch vehicles, or commercial spaceflight programs.
• Knowledge of ablative materials, reusable TPS systems, composites, high‑temperature ceramics, or insulation blankets.
• Understanding of TPS physics under high enthalpy flow (ablation, multi‑phase equilibria, radiative transport).
• Experience with heat testing (arc-jet,…