# Senior Thermal Engineer

**Company:** [Icarus](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/icarus)
**Location:** El Segundo, CA
**Role:** Hardware Engineering
**Salary:** $150k – $190k/yr
**Experience:** 5+ years
**Skills:** thermal analysis, thermal design, cfd, FEA, thermal desktop, ansys, simcenter, Python, MATLAB, battery thermal management, thermal vacuum testing, altitude chamber testing
**Posted:** 2026-07-31

> Own end-to-end thermal design and analysis for high-altitude solar aircraft, including battery thermal management in low-convection environments. Requires taking designs from modeling through testing to flight, with strong experience in radiation-dominant thermal networks and hands-on chamber testing.

## Job Description

## What you’ll do

- Own thermal design of the aircraft, from first-order sizing through validation against altitude chamber and flight data.
- Model at the fidelity the decision requires — hand calculations and 1-D networks early, CFD and FEA when warranted.
- Own battery thermal management: insulation, heater sizing, and cold-soak survival. This is the constraint that sets our endurance.
- Deliver thermal solutions for avionics, powertrain, and payloads against aggressive mass targets, and select the materials, coatings, and interfaces to get there.
- 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.
- Define and run thermal testing: setups, instrumentation, procedures, and correlation of models to measured data.
- Work across structures, avionics, power, and manufacturing, and present thermal status at design and failure reviews.

## What we’re looking for

- 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.
- A thermal design you took from analysis through test and into flying hardware.
- Experience in low-convection environments where radiation dominates — spacecraft, high-altitude, or UAV.
- Strong 0-D and 1-D thermal network modeling, plus Thermal Desktop, ANSYS, Simcenter, or equivalent, and Python or MATLAB for tooling.
- Battery thermal management experience: pack-level modeling, heater strategies, and cold-soak survival.
- Hands-on test experience with thermal-vacuum or altitude chambers, instrumentation, and model correlation.
- Comfort working on the floor with hardware and technicians.

## Why Icarus

- Meaningful equity
- Top market salary and bonuses
- Health, dental, and vision insurance
- Factory in El Segundo
- Real ownership, real hardware, real flight
- Small team, massive responsibility (but growing very fast)
- High signal (engineering) to noise (management) culture
- Dream desk setup
- Daily lunch
- Unlimited celsius

## US salary range

$150,000 - $190,000 USD
The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations. Highly competitive equity grants are considered part of Icarus' total compensation package.

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