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Engineering
Bothell, WA
Full-time
Senior Thermal Structural Analysis Engineer
Send your cover letter and resume to info@portalsystems.space with the email subject: Senior Structural Engineer — Spacecraft Systems
The Thermal-Structural Analysis Engineer is responsible for substantiating spacecraft structures operating in high-temperature and thermally severe environments. This role owns coupled thermal–structural analyses used to evaluate stress, deformation, and margin of safety for propulsion-adjacent and elevated-temperature hardware. The position works closely with propulsion, thermal, materials, and test teams to ensure structural integrity is maintained across qualification and flight environments.
Responsibilities
Primary Responsibilities – Thermal-Structural Substantiation
- Develop and maintain coupled thermal–structural finite element models for spacecraft hardware operating in elevated-temperature environments
- Perform thermo-mechanical stress, distortion, fatigue, and margin of safety analyses driven by thermal gradients and transient heating
- Evaluate high-temperature material behavior and structural performance using analysis and first-principles hand calculations
- Partner with propulsion, thermal, and design teams to validate and optimize structural designs for strength, stiffness, weight, and thermal durability
- Support structural verification of propulsion-adjacent and thermally driven hardware through qualification and flight readiness
- Define, execute, and interpret elevated-temperature material strength testing to characterize mechanical properties and support thermo-mechanical structural verification
Additional Responsibilities – Testing, Correlation & Automation
- Define and support elevated-temperature material and structural test campaigns to characterize thermo-mechanical behavior
- Correlate analytical predictions with high-temperature test data and resolve discrepancies using first-principles reasoning
- Develop Python-based tools to automate coupled analysis post-processing, reporting, and verification workflows
- Contribute to documentation of thermal-structural assumptions, methods, and verification rationale
Basic Qualifications
- 2–5 years of experience in thermal-structural or thermo-mechanical analysis for aerospace systems
- Experience performing coupled thermal–structural stress, deformation, and margin of safety analyses
- Proficiency developing and maintaining coupled thermal–structural FEMs using FEMAP/Nastran or Siemens Simcenter 3D
- Experience evaluating elevated-temperature material behavior and structural performance
- Experience supporting propulsion or thruster-adjacent hardware operating in high-temperature environments
- Proficiency with Python and/or MATLAB for analysis automation, data reduction, and reporting
- Experience using version control systems such as Git in an engineering analysis environment
- BS or MS in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related engineering discipline
Preferred skills & Experience
- Strong ability to perform coupled thermal–structural analysis for spacecraft hardware in elevated-temperature environments
- Deep understanding of thermal gradient-driven stress, distortion, and failure mechanisms
- Ability to model, interpret, and validate high-temperature material behavior within structural analyses
- Proficiency in using first-principles hand calculations to bound and verify coupled FEM results
- Ability to correlate thermo-mechanical analysis with high-temperature test data and resolve discrepancies
- Clear technical communication skills for documenting assumptions, methods, and verification rationale
Send your cover letter and resume to careers@portalsystems.space with the email subject: Senior Thermal Structural Analysis Engineer
careers@portalsystems.space