Senior Principal Thermal Engineer (AI Infrastructure)

Location: Research Triangle Park (RTP), North Carolina, United States

Salary: $195,000–$250,000 per year, depending on experience, level, and business needs. Discretionary bonuses, incentives, and benefits may also apply.

Company

hirify.global provides rack-scale AI infrastructure through semiconductor-based connectivity solutions and its COSMOS software suite, integrating technologies including CXL, Ethernet, NVLink, PCIe, and UALink.

What you will do

• Define end-to-end thermal architecture, budgets, cooling requirements, performance objectives, and multi-generation roadmaps for rack-scale AI systems.
• Lead cooling design for GPU compute platforms, scale-up and scale-out networking, AI accelerators, rack controllers, and optical interconnect systems.
• Architect high-performance airflow, direct liquid cooling, cold plate, and advanced rack cooling solutions for future 100kW+ AI racks.
• Develop thermal solutions for NPO, CPO, optical engines, silicon photonics, fiber connectivity, and optical transceiver platforms.
• Lead CFD simulations, airflow analysis, thermal modeling, laboratory correlation, validation procedures, and thermal KPI development.
• Work with ODM and JDM partners and collaborate across system, mechanical, power, electrical, silicon, reliability, and manufacturing engineering.

Requirements

• BS, MS, or PhD in Mechanical Engineering, Thermal Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Physics, or a related discipline.
• 15+ years of thermal engineering experience with thermal architecture leadership for AI infrastructure, networking, servers, storage, or hyperscale systems.
• Deep expertise in heat transfer, conduction and convection, airflow optimization, thermal characterization, cooling system design, and rack-level thermal architecture.
• Hands-on experience with ANSYS Icepak, FloTHERM, 6SigmaET, and CFD tools and methodologies.
• Strong experience with thermal validation and simulation-to-measurement correlation.
• Strong systems thinking, strategic technology leadership, cross-functional influence, communication, and architectural decision-making skills.

Nice to have

• Experience with NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel AI platforms and Open Rack or OCP architectures.
• Expertise in liquid cooling and rack power densities above 50kW, with scaling toward 100kW–250kW deployments.
• Familiarity with PCIe Scale-Up, UALink, Ethernet scale-out networking, and hyperscale customer environments.
• Experience with NPO, CPO, optical engines, silicon photonics, and fiber connectivity systems.

Culture & Benefits

• Opportunity to influence thermal architecture for advanced AI infrastructure and optical connectivity products.
• Work spans system architecture, silicon engineering, software architecture, mechanical and power architecture, and ODM partners.
• The role may be eligible for discretionary bonuses, incentives, and benefits.
• hirify.global encourages applications from people with diverse backgrounds and experiences.