Staff Thermal Engineer - Aircraft Avionics & Thermal Systems (R3930)
Shield AI
What you'll do:
- Contribute to thermal analysis and design efforts for unmanned aerial vehicle avionics and thermal/fluid systems.
- Build and validate analytical, numerical, and computational models for heat transfer and fluid flow using hand calculations and CFD tools such as FloEFD.
- Participate in trade studies, system architecture reviews, and risk assessments.
- Support test planning, instrumentation, and data analysis to correlate models with experimental results.
- Collaborate with cross-disciplinary teams in applying thermal/fluid fundamentals.
- Communicate technical findings through design reviews, reports, and team discussions.
- Proactively identify technical issues and propose solutions in coordination with senior engineers.
Required qualifications:
- B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related discipline.
- Minimum 5 years of professional experience in avionics or electronics thermal engineering.
- Strong knowledge of heat transfer (conduction, convection, radiation) and fluid mechanics.
- Familiarity with thermal management design elements including TIMs, spreaders, heat sinks, vapor chambers, heat pipes, and fans.
- Proficiency with thermal analysis and CFD tools (e.g., ANSYS Icepak, FloEFD, STAR-CCM+).
- Proficiency with CAD design tools such as NX, SolidWorks, or similar.
- Ability to apply first-principles reasoning to engineering problems.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
Preferred qualifications:
- M.S. in a relevant engineering discipline.
- Experience with aircraft avionics cooling and thermal design.
- Familiarity with aircraft integration constraints (power, weight, volume, maintainability, safety).
- Hands-on experience with thermal and fluid system testing and validation.
- Knowledge of materials and manufacturing methods relevant to thermal management.