Lead Thermal Simulation Engineer

Responsibilities

• Perform thermal simulations to assess heat generation, cooling strategies, thermal interfaces, and system-level thermal performance.
• Partner with mechanical, electrical, and controls engineers to influence design decisions early in development.
• Build simulation models to evaluate robotic actuators, transmissions, mechanisms, structures, soft goods, and integrated assemblies.
• Correlate simulation results with physical testing and develop methodologies to improve model accuracy.
• Support architecture trade studies by evaluating design concepts before hardware is built.
• Develop simulation workflows, standards, and best practices that scale across the robotics organization.
• Identify technical risks and recommend design changes to improve performance, reliability, and manufacturability.
• Support root cause investigations by combining test data, failure analysis, and simulation results.
• Contribute to long-term simulation capabilities including multiphysics modeling, digital twins, and system-level analysis.

Requirements

• Experience performing thermal simulation and design of complex electromechanical systems.
• Proficiency with commercial CAE tools such as Simcenter 3D, Abaqus, Ansys, Nastran, LS-DYNA, COMSOL, or equivalent platforms.
• Experience correlating simulation models with physical test data and validation campaigns for high volume products.
• Familiarity with robotic systems, actuators, mechanisms, power electronics, batteries, or other highly integrated hardware systems.
• Experience developing simulation methodologies, automation tools, or organization-wide thermal workflows.

Nice-to-Haves

• Strong intuition for mechanical systems and ability to connect simulation results to real-world hardware behavior.
• Enjoy using first-principles engineering and simulation to solve complex multidisciplinary problems.
• Comfortable operating in ambiguous environments where simulation and design helps guide architecture decisions.
• Balance modeling rigor with practical engineering judgment and development speed.
• Enjoy collaborating closely with hardware teams and influencing products from concept through deployment.