Sr. Thermal Engineer

About the role

Eridu AI is a well-funded startup in Saratoga, CA building next-generation hardware for AI data center networking. Our systems operate at power densities well beyond conventional networking equipment and rely on advanced liquid cooling.

As a Senior Thermal Engineer, you will own your thermal hardware end to end: design, development, test, release and delivery. Ownership is the core of this role. You drive your parts to closure, you don't wait to be asked, and when something slips or fails you take responsibility for fixing it. You will work closely with suppliers and manufacturing partners to make sure parts arrive on schedule and meet quality requirements.

What you'll do

• Own your thermal components and subsystems from concept to production. You are accountable for their schedule, cost and quality.
• Design and develop thermal hardware for liquid-cooled systems, including cold plates, coolant loop components and thermal interfaces.
• Run thermal and CFD analysis to validate designs and support design decisions.
• Build and execute test plans: thermal test vehicles, flow and pressure-drop testing, thermal resistance measurement and reliability testing.
• Correlate test results to models and drive design fixes to closure.
• Release designs to production: drawings, specs, BOMs and PLM release, with DFM input from suppliers.
• Manage thermal component suppliers from prototype to production: quotes, first articles, inspection and corrective actions.
• Track supplier schedules, raise risks early with a recovery plan, and follow through until builds are back on plan.
• Own quality for your parts: incoming inspection criteria, failure analysis and root-cause resolution.
• Support manufacturing partners during builds and ramp.

Required qualifications

• BS in Mechanical Engineering or related field with 8+ years of thermal engineering experience, or MS with 6+ years.
• Hands-on design of liquid cooling for high-power electronics (cold plates, loops, QDs, manifolds).
• Strong CFD and thermal modeling skills (e.g., Ansys Icepak/Fluent, FloTHERM, or Simcenter), with a track record of correlating models to test data.
• Lab experience: thermal test vehicles, instrumentation, flow loops, data acquisition.
• Working knowledge of TIMs and their failure modes (pump-out, dry-out, voiding, contact pressure).
• Experience taking hardware from concept through production release, including supplier management (quotes, first articles, corrective actions).
• A proven track record of ownership: you have taken parts or projects to production and can point to issues you drove to closure without being asked.
• Proficiency with 3D CAD (Creo or SolidWorks).

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with high-performance TIMs (e.g., liquid metal, phase change) and their qualification.
• Thermal design for very large, high-power packages (AI/HPC accelerators, 1 kW+).
• Experience with advanced attach or joining processes for thermal hardware.
• Familiarity with OCP rack and liquid cooling standards.
• Experience working with ODMs or contract manufacturers in Asia.
• MS or PhD in heat transfer or fluid mechanics.

Notice to Recruiting Agencies

Eridu does not accept unsolicited resumes or candidate profiles from staffing agencies or third-party recruiters. Any candidate submitted to Eridu without prior written authorization from our recruiting team will be considered unsolicited and will become the property of Eridu. Eridu reserves the right to pursue and hire such candidates without any obligation to pay fees. Recruiting agencies are expressly instructed not to contact hiring managers, employees, or executives regarding open positions.