Job Description

Senior Thermal & CFD Engineer (Contract-to-Hire)

3–4 Week & ≈ 20 hrs / wk (70-80 hrs total) | Remote-First* | U.S. persons only

*Occasional day-trips to our SoCal integration shop for fit-checks & test days

We’re a defense startup building a compact, high-energy electromechanical platform that solves some of the hardest problems in modern point protection. You’ll join a small, multidisciplinary team moving from prototype to operational test on an accelerated schedule.

• Thermal-System Architecture – size, model, and detail-design the liquid jacket, purge-air ducts, and heat-sink stack for a 150k RPM motor
• Full-Stack CFD / FEA Ownership – build and run Ansys; close the loop with flash-temperature hand-calcs, transient thermo-structural stress, and rotor growth / balance checks.
• Motor & Power-Electronics Cooling – design a compact glycol loop (pump, HX, cartridge) plus quick-disconnects that survive MIL-STD-810H thermal shock and dust ingress.
• Material, Coating, and Lubrication Trade-offs – select copper alloys, AM HX cores, dry-film coatings, and purge-gas conditioning to manage tungsten-on-steel flash temps at Mach 4-6.
• Prototype-to-Test Execution – release CAD/BOM, stand up lab rigs, instrument with T-type TC, IR, and telemetry; verify model/bench ΔT ≤ ±10 °C.
• Qualification Path – draft and run MIL-STD-810H (thermal, altitude) and DO-160G (cooling flow) test plans; write data packs for investor / customer demo.
• Cross-Functional Integration – work daily with structures, bearings, controls, and manufacturing to turn simulations into field-ready hardware inside a single-pallet, 360° gimbal envelope.
  

• B.S. or higher in Mechanical, Aerospace, or similar.
• 7+ years closing tough thermal problems on high-speed rotors, EV drive units, turbomachinery, or defense hardware.
• Expert-level Ansys ; solid with journal/Python automation.
• Track record from concept → CFD/FEA → prototype → validated hardware under compressed timelines.
• Fluent in first-principles heat-transfer, flash-temperature, and rotor thermo-elastic calcs—comfortable proving numbers on a whiteboard.
• Hands-on—enjoys CAD iteration, sensor wiring, and late-night data wrangling with the test team.

• Two-phase / evaporative or conformal AM heat-exchanger experience.
• MIL-STD-810 or RTCA DO-160 thermal qualification chops.
• Background in rotor dynamics or bearing thermo-elastic stability.
• Uses AI co-pilots (e.g., Gemini, Copilot) responsibly to accelerate meshing, optimization, and reporting.

• 60-day impact: Your work is the gate for live-fire demo
• Autonomy + focus: 20 hrs / week, results-driven, no corporate drag.
• Path to full-time: Nail this surge and step into Principal Thermal Engineer as we scale.
• Equity upside: Contract hourly plus grant potential upon conversion.

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