Thermal Associate Engineer (Winter 2027)

About the role

Astranis builds advanced satellites for high orbits, expanding humanity’s reach into the solar system. Today Astranis satellites provide dedicated, secure networks to highly-sophisticated customers across the globe – large enterprises, sovereign governments, and the US military. With five satellites on orbit and many more set to launch soon, the company is servicing a backlog of more than $1 billion of commercial contracts. Astranis is the preferred satellite communications partner for buyers with stringent requirements for uptime, data security, network visibility, and customization. Astranis has raised over $1.2 billion from some of the world’s best investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, Blackrock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, and Snowpoint, and employs a team of 500 engineers and entrepreneurs. Astranis designs, builds, and operates its satellites out of its 153,000 sq. ft. headquarters in Northern California, USA. The Thermal Engineer Associate (Winter 2027) position is a twelve‑week salaried associate engineer role for students who have already received a bachelor's degree (or will have done so before starting).

Responsibilities

• Work together with the engineering team to design, analyze, build, and test satellite hardware and/or software.
• Support design trades that successfully balance performance margins, resource use, risk, cost, and schedule.
• Perform thermal analysis to varying degrees of fidelity (simplified to detailed) on a variety of different types of hardware such as propulsion components, batteries, high powered electronics, RF components, mechanisms, and printed circuit boards (PCBs).
• Design, evaluate, procure and test thermal solutions such as heaters, heat pipes, thermal interface materials, and surface coatings.
• Develop processes and procedures for integration and assembly which ensure thermal design intent is met.
• Collaborate with the integration and test team in the installation of thermal hardware as needed.
• Plan and run thermal vacuum testing and verification at the component and spacecraft level.

Requirements

• Have a four‑year degree in mechanical, aerospace, or equivalent technical degree (e.g. physics or applied math).
• A passion and enthusiasm for hardware development, including working in a fast‑paced environment and hands‑on design and development.
• Demonstrated ability to personally design, build, and test hardware from scratch.
• US Citizenship or Green Card (lawful permanent residency).

Don't meet them all? Not a problem. Please apply even if you do not meet all these criteria.

Skills

• Experience with CAD.
• Experience with analytical software thermal analysis such as ANSYS and Thermal Desktop.
• Experience with electronics systems design and packaging.
• Experience (projects or previous internships) related to aerospace.

Pay

The base salary for this position is $1,925 per week.