Senior Thermal Engineer

At Vast, our mission is to contribute to a future where billions of people are living and thriving in space. Vast is developing next-generation space stations to ensure a continuous human presence in space for America and its allies, enabling advanced microgravity research and manufacturing, and unlocking a new space economy for government, corporate, and private customers. Using an incremental, hardware-rich and low-cost approach, Vast is rapidly developing its multi-module Haven Station. Haven Demo’s 2025 success made Vast the only operational commercial space station company to fly and operate its own spacecraft. Next, Haven-1 is expected to become the world’s first commercial space station when it launches, followed by additional Haven modules to enable permanent human presence by 2030. Our team is all-in, committed to executing our mission safely and on time. If you want to work with the most talented people on Earth furthering space exploration for humanity, come join us.

Vast is seeking a Senior Thermal Engineer to define the thermal architecture and own thermal analysis for a new constellation-ready 15kW spacecraft bus — a product line designed to scale to hundreds of spacecraft per year.

This will be a full-time , exempt position located in our Long Beach location.

About this role:

We're designing a high-power satellite bus that accommodates multiple payload types — including a compute-intensive Nvidia payload with significant thermal dissipation. The thermal architecture is a first-order design decision for this bus, not an afterthought. You'll own thermal analysis and design from system architecture through flight delivery, starting during the architecture trade studies.

The thermal challenges span the full range: multiple payload configurations with different thermal profiles, high-powe

Department: Satellite