Anduril Industries
Thermal Engineer, Thermal Protection Systems (TPS)
About this role
Anduril seeks a Thermal Engineer specializing in Thermal Protection Systems to design and validate thermal protection for hypersonic and high-speed flight vehicles. You'll own aerothermal analysis, ablative material modeling, and TPS integration across extreme-environment defense systems, working with first-principles calculations through detailed CFD and FEA.
What you'll do
- Design and select TPS materials (carbon phenolic, PICA, ceramics, composites) based on aerothermal loads, mass, and manufacturability constraints
- Perform aerothermal heating analysis using correlations, boundary-layer methods, and CFD to define thermal environments across flight trajectories
- Conduct ablation and material response modeling to predict TPS recession, in-depth thermal response, and structural margins
- Plan and execute thermal characterization tests including arcjet, furnace, and instrumented flight-article testing
- Integrate TPS into vehicle design with aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, and systems teams, managing mass-volume-performance tradeoffs
- Support design reviews, failure investigations, and qualification activities with thermal analysis and first-principles reasoning
What they're looking for
- Aerothermal heating analysis and boundary-layer methods
- Ablation and material response modeling (FIAT, CMA, TITAN, or equivalent)
- CFD for high-speed reacting flows (DPLR, US3D, Loci-CHEM, ANSYS Fluent, STAR-CCM+)
- High-temperature materials (carbon phenolic, PICA, SLA-561V, ceramic matrix composites)
- FEA and thermal model development
- Arcjet testing and thermal instrumentation
- MATLAB or Python for trajectory-based analysis and thermal margins
- Radiation modeling (NEQAIR, HARA) and NASA heritage tools (TPSX, CEA, CBAero)
Opens the application — the Jobs AI extension fills it for you. Set up autofill
Opens the official application on the employer’s site. No login required.
Anduril Industries
Anduril Industries builds autonomous defense systems including underwater vehicles, unmanned aircraft, and electronic warfare platforms for the Department of Defense. The company is hiring across mechanical engineering, mission operations, software development, technical leadership, and advanced manufacturing roles to support the design, deployment, and production of these mission-critical systems.
- Website
- anduril.com
Likely interview questions
- Walk us through your approach to selecting a TPS material for a hypersonic vehicle given specific aerothermal loads, mass budgets, and reusability constraints.
- Describe a time you used ablation modeling tools to predict in-depth thermal response or material recession—what did you learn and how did it influence design?