Thermal Design Engineer (Robotics)

Location: Palo Alto, United States; on-site

Company

hirify.global develops Physical AI systems for real-world industrial deployment, starting with factory-floor robotics.

What you will do

• Own thermal design and analysis for robotic arms, end effectors, actuators, and on-board compute from concept through volume production.
• Develop thermal architectures for high-torque-density motors, gearboxes, drives, CPUs, GPUs, custom accelerators, and power electronics.
• Design cooling solutions using heat sinks, heat pipes, vapor chambers, thermal interface materials, airflow, and active cooling.
• Build analytical, CFD, and FEA thermal models and validate them through thermocouples, infrared imaging, calorimetry, and accelerated stress testing.
• Define thermal limits, derating curves, and protection logic with electrical, firmware, and controls teams.
• Support DFM/DFA, component selection, supplier relationships, contract manufacturing, and lifetime thermal validation.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience, or equivalent hard-tech project experience, designing and validating thermal solutions for complex electromechanical systems.
• Strong fundamentals in conduction, convection, and radiation, with working knowledge of two-phase cooling and heat-pipe or vapor-chamber design.
• Hands-on experience with CFD tools such as Ansys Icepak, FloTHERM, SolidWorks Flow Simulation, or similar, plus thermal FEA.
• Experience solving thermal problems in high-torque-density motors or actuators, dense power electronics, or CPU/GPU/custom accelerator systems.
• Experience instrumenting, testing, and debugging thermal performance on real hardware.
• High proficiency in SolidWorks, CATIA, or similar CAD tools, plus experience with extrusion, die casting, brazing, stamping, or related volume processes.

Nice to have

• Experience in robotics, prosthetics, EV powertrains, drones, or other dense electromechanical systems.
• Familiarity with motor and actuator thermal modeling, including winding hot-spot estimation and lumped-parameter networks.
• Experience with liquid cooling or hybrid air/liquid systems.
• PhD or research experience in thermal sciences.

Culture & Benefits

• Hands-on engineering focused on physical systems and real-world industrial deployment.
• Ownership of thermal architecture across the full product lifecycle.
• Close collaboration with electrical, firmware, controls, and manufacturing functions.
• Fast iteration, comfort with ambiguity, and curiosity about complete system behavior.