Mechanical Engineer - Thermal Analysis, Amazon Prime Air, Drone Delivery

Job description

Hardware Development Engineer II – Thermal Analysis

We are seeking a Hardware Development Engineer II to join our Electric Propulsion Subsystem team. In this role, you will be a significant and autonomous contributor, solving difficult thermal engineering problems for an electric aerial drone. You will own the thermal analysis and thermal management strategy for the vehicle's battery pack, electric motors, power electronics, and avionics, developing high-fidelity FEA and CFD models that drive design decisions.

This position requires an engineer who demonstrates strong technical depth in heat transfer, fluid dynamics, and numerical simulation while also exhibiting the system-level thinking and influence characteristic of our most impactful contributors.

Key job responsibilities

• Develop high-fidelity FEA and CFD thermal models of the drone's battery pack, motors, power electronics, and avionics, capturing conduction, convection, and radiation across the full flight envelope and ambient operating range.
• Define and develop thermal management strategies and systems for the battery pack, including cold-weather heating, in-flight and ground cooling, and cell-to-cell temperature uniformity.
• Develop cooling strategies for electric motors and motor controllers, including forced-air and conductive paths, and trade thermal performance against mass, drag, and packaging constraints.
• Analyze candidate designs and quantify thermal margins, hot-spot locations, transient temperature response, and sensitivity to operating conditions, and communicate results as clear design recommendations.
• Perform thermal analysis of avionics systems, defining heat-sinking, airflow, and conduction paths that maintain component junction temperatures within reliability limits.
• Build reduced-order and lumped-parameter thermal models derived from high-fidelity simulations for use in system-level performance, range, and mission-planning tools.
• Define and execute thermal test campaigns, including instrumented bench tests, environmental chamber tests, and flight test data collection, and correlate physical results to analysis models.
• Establish thermal design requirements and operating limits.