Senior Thermal Engineer
Icarus
<p>Icarus was founded on the belief that the Stratosphere is the <a href="https://henryicarus.substack.com/p/the-forgotten-frontier?utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;triedRedirect=true"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #0000ee;">Forgotten Frontier</span></strong></a>&nbsp;and that reclaiming it will define the next era of aerospace and what is possible from the sky. We build solar-powered aircraft that fly at 60,000 ft for weeks at a time, delivering persistent, affordable, and scalable presence from this layer of the atmosphere.</p> <h2 style="color: #0000ee;">Mission</h2> <p>Re-establish and maintain dominance in the Stratosphere.</p> <h2 style="color: #0000ee;">What you’ll do</h2> <ul> <li>Own thermal design of the aircraft, from first-order sizing through validation against altitude chamber and flight data.</li> <li>Model at the fidelity the decision requires — hand calculations and 1-D networks early, CFD and FEA when warranted.</li> <li>Own battery thermal management: insulation, heater sizing, and cold-soak survival. This is the constraint that sets our endurance.</li> <li>Deliver thermal solutions for avionics, powertrain, and payloads against aggressive mass targets, and select the materials, coatings, and interfaces to get there.</li> <li>Quantify how temperature drives the power budget. Solar cell, battery, and motor efficiency all move with temperature, and your analysis feeds the energy balance that keeps the aircraft up.</li> <li>Define and run thermal testing: setups, instrumentation, procedures, and correlation of models to measured data.</li> <li>Work across structures, avionics, power, and manufacturing, and present thermal status at design and failure reviews.</li> </ul> <h2 style="color: #0000ee;">What we’re looking for</h2> <ul> <li>3+ years in thermal analysis or thermal design of flight, space, or high-reliability hardware, with a degree in mechanical, aerospace, or another engineering discipline.</li> <li>A thermal design you took from analysis through test and into flying hardware.</li> <li>Experience in low-convection environments where radiation dominates — spacecraft, high-altitude, or UAV.</li> <li>Strong 0-D and 1-D thermal network modeling, plus Thermal Desktop, ANSYS, Simcenter, or equivalent, and Python or MATLAB for tooling.</li> <li>Battery thermal management experience: pack-level modeling, heater strategies, and cold-soak survival.</li> <li>Hands-on test experience with thermal-vacuum or altitude chambers, instrumentation, and model correlation.</li> <li>Comfort working on the floor with hardware and technicians. Onsite in El Segundo; this role is not remote.</li> <li>A serious commitment to feedback and growth, and the drive to perform in a fast-paced, high-intensity environment.</li> </ul> <h2 style="color: #0000ee;">Why Icarus</h2> <ol> <li>Meaningful equity</li> <li>Top market salary and bonuses</li> <li>Health, dental, and vision insurance</li> <li>Factory in El Segundo</li> <li>Real ownership, real hardware, real flight</li> <li>Small team, massive responsibility (but growing very fast)</li> <li>High signal (engineering) to noise (management) culture</li> <li>Dream desk setup</li> <li>Daily lunch</li> <li>Unlimited celsius</li> </ol> <h2 style="color: #0000ee;">This is not a normal engineering job</h2> <ol> <li>We are pioneers, not corporate managers. Icarus deliberately optimizes for a high signal (engineers) to no