Team Lead - Thermofluids Analysis (Aerospace)

Location: Auckland, New Zealand; onsite at the Auckland Production Complex Office

Company

hirify.global is an end-to-end space company building rockets, spacecraft, launch systems, and critical aerospace subsystems.

What you will do

• Lead and develop a multidisciplinary Thermofluids Analysis team spanning aeroscience, thermal, and propellant analysis.
• Direct architecture and concept-level trades, evaluate system performance and environments, and shape requirements and program risk posture.
• Generate aerotables, perform CFD analyses, and characterise aerodynamic, heating, plume, hypersonic, transonic, and subsonic environments.
• Own thermal design across ground, flight, and in-space operations, including heat transfer, thermal protection systems, insulation, HVAC, and component modelling.
• Lead propellant delivery and management analyses, including tank pressurisation, slosh, cavitation, settling, residuals, RCS systems, and internal fluid-flow CFD.
• Collaborate with design and test engineers to define test requirements, analyse ground and flight data, and demonstrate positive engineering margins.

Requirements

• Degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a similar field.
• 5+ years of industry experience, ideally in aerospace, automotive, or marine industries.
• Experience with CFD packages such as Fluent, CFX, or STAR-CCM+.
• Experience with thermal modelling packages such as Thermal Desktop, THERMICA, or NX SST.
• Strong engineering programming skills, especially Python and packages including NumPy, pandas, SciPy, and Matplotlib.
• Ability to execute against changing deadlines in a high-pressure, fast-paced environment.

Nice to have

• Experience with sensor selection and post-processing data from accelerometers, strain gauges, and thermocouples.
• Experience with NX CAD and Teamcenter or comparable packages for model interrogation and defeaturing.
• Experience mentoring junior engineers.

Culture & Benefits

• Work on Neutron, a new large rocket and its launch and test infrastructure.
• Collaborative, hands-on environment focused on meaningful space missions and real hardware.
• Fast-paced work with tight deadlines, high technical ownership, and cross-functional collaboration.
• For New Zealand roles, background and nationality checks are conducted before employment offers because access to ITAR-regulated equipment and data is required.
• Eligibility may depend on holding citizenship of Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, a European Union country, or a NATO member country, subject to ITAR requirements.