Senior Thermal Engineer

About the Role

Uber is launching AV Labs to accelerate the autonomous technology ecosystem. We're building out a high-velocity team of multi-disciplinary experts to turn real-world operations into high-quality data for our autonomous partners. This team is focused on the hardest problem in AV today: unlocking real-world, long-tail driving data. Autonomy is now a data race—and Uber has an edge: We collect rare, real-world driving data at a scale and capital efficiency no one else can match.

As a Senior Thermal Engineer at Uber AV Labs, you will own thermal design, validation, and troubleshooting for autonomous vehicle hardware. This is a highly hands-on role working directly with sensors, compute systems, vehicle hardware, and environmental systems from prototype through production.

Core Responsibilities

• Own end to end thermal design and validation for vehicle hardware, including compute units, power electronics and sensor systems
• Design practical thermal solutions using liquid cooling, conduction, convection, heat sinks, fans/blowers, heaters, insulation, and thermal interface materials.
• Design and develop liquid cooling systems, including coolant loops, cold plates, pumps, heat exchangers/radiators, reservoirs, valves, hoses, and vehicle integration.
• Build and instrument prototypes; perform bench, thermal chamber, and vehicle testing across hot/cold environmental conditions.
• Perform thermal and fluid calculations to size cooling components and evaluate system performance.
• Use thermal/CFD simulation where appropriate and correlate models against physical test data.
• Troubleshoot thermal and cooling-system issues directly on vehicles and hardware, identify root causes, and implement corrective actions.
• Work closely with mechanical, electrical, sensor, compute, vehicle integration, and operation teams.
• Drive designs from early prototype through validation builds and release in production.

Basic Qualifications

• BS/MS in Mechanical Engineering or a related engineering discipline.
• 5+ years of thermal engineering experience, preferably in automotive, autonomous vehicles, robotics, aerospace, or high-power electronics.
• Strong hands-on experience designing, building, and validating cooling systems. Demonstrated experience with liquid cooling.
• Strong hands-on experience building, instrumenting, and testing thermal systems.
• Strong understanding of heat transfer, fluid mechanics, and electronics thermal management.
• Experience with environmental chambers and vehicle-level hot/cold testing.
• Experience with CAD (Solidworks, NX, Catia or equivalent) and mechanical design
• Comfortable working directly with prototype hardware, test equipment, and vehicles.
• Demonstrated ability to take an ambiguous thermal problem from measurement → root cause → design → validation.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with thermal/CFD tools
• Automotive coolant-loop or vehicle thermal-management experience. 
• Familiarity with automotive validation, reliability testing, and production design processes. 

Responsibilities

For Sunnyvale, CA-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD $180,000 per year - USD $200,000 per year.

You will be eligible to participate in Uber's bonus program, and may be offered an equity award & other types of comp. All full-time employees are eligible to participate in a 401(k) plan. You will also be eligible for various benefits.

Ready to Ride?

This isn't the kind of place where you follow a playbook — it's where you help write one. If you're driven by impact, energized by challenge, and ready to shape how the world moves — we'd love to hear from you.

You may be eligible for bonuses, equity, and other compensation, as well as a range of benefits. Explore our benefits.

Offices remain key to collaboration and Uber's culture. Unless approved for full remote work, employees must spend at least 50% of their time in-office. Some roles, like those at greenlight hubs, require full-time in-office presence. Ask your Recruiter for details about this role's requirements.

Uber is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know by completing this form.