Full time Permanent Associate

Description

General Description

StarSpec Technologies is seeking a Thermal Engineer to take dedicated ownership of thermal analysis and thermal design for scientific balloon payloads, precision instruments, and satellite systems. You will work closely with our mechanical, optical, electrical, and systems engineers to understand the operating environment, predict thermal behaviour, and turn analysis into hardware and test decisions.

This role needs sustained attention to the entire analysis process: credible inputs, physically sound models, useful trade studies, documented reviews, and validation against measurements. Thermal engineering will be your primary responsibility. As part of a small team, you will also contribute to integration, instrumentation, prototyping, and wider engineering tasks, with opportunities to develop into thermal technical leadership and broader project leadership.

Key Responsibilities

- Own thermal analysis and design work packages from requirements and model planning through design recommendations, testing, correlation, and final reporting, with minimal oversight. Make and own engineering decisions, with support and review available from technical leads and peers.
- Manage scope, milestone deliverables, schedules, and risks for assigned work, and communicate technical decisions directly to clients and partners. Prioritize thermal work across concurrent projects at different stages, from early concepts through detailed design and test support.
- Build and maintain steady-state and transient thermal models. Prepare CAD, select suitable mesh/model detail, and document material properties, surface finishes, conductive interfaces, heat loads, and boundary conditions.




- Define relevant hot/cold, day/night, operational, and survival cases for stratospheric and space environments, accounting for conduction, radiation, and convection where physically applicable.
- Use hand calculations, energy-balance checks, sensitivity studies, and convergence checks to challenge model results. Identify uncertain inputs, seek missing evidence, and explain the effect on design margins.
- Evaluate thermal-control options such as heaters, sensors, insulation, coatings, heat sinking, and thermal isolation. Work with colleagues to assess power, mass, manufacturability, wiring, and assembly implications.
- Coordinate temperature-field transfer to structural and optical analyses, checking geometry and coordinate consistency to assess deformation, alignment, and performance.
- Help define thermal and thermal-vacuum tests, instrumentation, and acceptance criteria; correlate predictions with laboratory and flight data and document remaining discrepancies.
- Maintain traceable model revisions, assumptions, case definitions, and results. Drive timely technical reviews and communicate clear recommendations, risks, and next steps.
- Improve reusable analysis workflows and support colleagues' understanding of thermal design, growing toward responsibility for thermal standards, mentoring and technical reviews.

Qualifications





Must-Haves

- A degree in Mechanical, Aerospace, Engineering Physics, or a related discipline with a strong foundation in heat transfer and thermodynamics.
- Demonstrated ownership of thermal modelling and analysis for real hardware, typically developed through 2+ years of relevant work. Substantial applied research with hardware validation is also relevant.
- Experience with a thermal solver and confidence building, checking, and maintaining steady-state and transient models, including radiation and conductive interfaces.
- Ability to connect model predictions to physical behaviour and measurements, make defensible simplifying assumptions, and investigate unexpected results.
- Clear technical writing and customer communication, disciplined documentation, and the ability to prioritize concurrent projects while coordinating inputs from a multidisciplinary team.
- Availability for on-site integration and testing in Ayr, with occasional travel for test or flight campaigns.

Nice-to-Haves

- TAITherm, Thermal Desktop, or comparable thermal tools; CAD preparation and meshing with Onshape, SolidWorks, HyperMesh, or equivalent software.
- Balloon, spacecraft, vacuum, or precision-instrument thermal design; thermoelastic or optical-performance coupling; heater and sensor implementation.
- Thermal-vacuum testing, test instrumentation and data acquisition, or correlation against environmental and flight measurements.
- Python, MATLAB, or similar tools for analysis automation and data processing; experience leading reviews or mentoring colleagues.
- Familiarity with state-of-the-art agentic AI systems to integrate and s

📌 Thermal Engineer (Ayr)
🏢 StarSpec Technologies
📍 Ayr