Sr. Mechanical Engineer – Thermal Systems (Heaters) in Hayward, California at Therm-x of California

Therm-x of California designs and builds heaters, temperature sensors, and thermal assemblies for semiconductor and high-technology equipment. The Sr. Mechanical Engineer – Thermal Systems owns the design of our brazed and welded heater assemblies from customer concept to a product running in production: you establish the requirements with the customer, develop the concept, model and analyze it, guide the prototype build and test with our shop, and lead the project through release.

This is a design-owner role for an engineer who wants to see their hardware get hot, hold uniformity, and survive thousands of cycles in a customer's tool — at a company that has built thermal hardware for over 30 years and is small enough that one engineer owns a product end to end, a few steps from the machinists and brazers who build it, with a remote engineering team behind them.

Therm-x engineering is investing in AI-assisted workflows for design documentation, analysis setup, and design review; this engineer helps shape how we use them.

• Establish product requirements with customers and internal teams, and develop concept designs that communicate the approach and get everyone aligned early.
• Own the mechanical and thermal design of new heater and thermal-assembly products — heated bodies and pedestals, power calculations, element and sensor placement, insulation, and the interface to the customer's tool — and release the 3D models (SolidWorks, Inventor, or Solid Edge) and GD&T drawing packages, including pre-braze and pre-weld details.
• Select materials and joining processes for service at temperature — stainless and nickel alloys, refractory metals, ceramics, braze alloys, welding — and design for CTE mismatch, braze-joint reliability, and distortion up front.
• Predict performance before cutting metal: hand calculations and thermal/structural FEA (COMSOL, ANSYS, or similar), then correlate against test data.
• Guide prototype builds and testing with our machinists, technicians, and suppliers: define the thermal uniformity, ramp, cycling, and dielectric tests, review the data, and iterate the design.
• Lead each product as a project — schedule, cost, and risk; customer and design reviews; supplier specifications and first-article approval — and carry the design into manufacturing in Hayward and at Therm-x de Mexico with documentation, fixturing concepts, and support through the first production builds.
• Use and help develop our AI-assisted engineering workflows — requirement reviews, drawing and documentation packages, analysis setup, design-review prep — so the team spends its time on design decisions, not paperwork.
• Mentor Level I and II engineers, delegate engineering work to team members including our remote engineering team, and build reusable design rules and analysis templates for heater assemblies.

Required Skills;

• 8+ years as a mechanical design engineer owning designs from concept through release (design years, not total career years).
• Designed hardware that operates at elevated temperature and reached production — heaters, furnaces, hot process hardware, or brazed and welded assemblies.
• Working command of heat transfer and thermal-mechanical behavior at temperature: conduction, radiation, watt-density limits, CTE mismatch, oxidation.
• Strong 3D CAD and complete GD&T drawing packages (ASME Y14.5); reads basic electrical schematics.
• Has carried at least one product from concept to production, working day to day with technicians, machinists, and suppliers.
• Basic project management — MS Project or similar Gantt scheduling — with strong written and spoken communication.
• Based at our Hayward, CA facility. Onsite preferred; hybrid arrangements can be discussed on a case-by-case basis.
• Able to travel to our Mexico facility at least once a quarter, typically for several days, to support production transfers and builds.

Preferred Skills;

• Designed heaters specifically — resistive heaters, heated pedestals or chucks, or thermal sensing hardware.
• Design for brazing and welding, including ceramic-to-metal and vacuum-brazed joints.
• Thermal FEA you have personally run and correlated to test (COMSOL preferred).
• Semiconductor capital equipment or vacuum-system experience.
• Experience specifying thermocouples, RTDs, and temperature controllers.
• Curiosity about AI-assisted engineering — generative design, AI-assisted documentation and analysis, LLM-based design review — and hands-on use of these tools in real design work.

Education and/or Experience:

• BS in Mechanical Engineering or closely related discipline; MS preferred.
• 8+ years of mechanical design engineering, including hardware that operates at elevated temperature, and a record of leading product programs end to end.
• Authorized to work in the United States without current or future employer sponsorship.

Compensation: USD 150,000 – 180,000 base salary depending on experience, plus benefits.

Work Location: Hayward, CA. Onsite

Travel: Yes — international travel to our Mexico facility at least quarterly; occasional customer and supplier visits.

Physical Demands: Regularly required to stand, walk, sit, use hands, reach, stoop, kneel, and crouch; occasionally lift and/or move up to 30 pounds.

Work Environment: Manufacturing facility with machining, brazing, and welding operations; high noise level in shop areas; safety glasses required on the floor.

30 pounds.