Thermal Development Engineer

Join us at Gradient, where our purpose is to revolutionize home comfort while championing environmental sustainability. Our mission is to combat the escalating challenge of climate change by redefining how homes are heated and cooled. Today, the environmental impact of heating and cooling systems surpasses that of the entire transportation sector, and without intervention, this trend is set to escalate drastically. At Gradient, we believe that ensuring comfortable living spaces shouldn’t come at the cost of our planet. We envision a future where every individual can enjoy the luxury of a comfortable home without contributing to carbon emissions. Our high-efficiency, low-carbon heat pump is just the beginning of our journey toward fully decarbonizing buildings. By joining Gradient, you’ll be at the forefront of a movement to make sustainable living accessible to all, ensuring healthier communities and a brighter, greener future.

As a Thermal Development Engineer, you will select and qualify thermal components and improve thermal control algorithms with a focus on robust, reliable solutions. You will be expected to understand the effects of the decisions you make on system-level performance and user thermal comfort through experiments and modeling. You will collaborate with other engineers to integrate these components, algorithms, and subsystems into heat pump products.

The estimated salary range for this role is $103,000-$127,000 USD per year equity. Individual salaries vary on a number of factors including but not limited to geography, skills, education, experience and unique qualifications where applicable.

This role is required to be in our San Francisco office 5 days per week.

Responsibilities:

• Develop thermal systems for heat pumps with novel form factors to cut carbon emissions and expand access to healthy, comfortable buildings
• Design and optimize heat pumps by investigating components and operating parameters
• Design and run experiments, process and understand results, and identify paths forward
• Use modeling techniques to understand thermodynamic, flow, and heat transfer processes
• Collaborate with designers and engineers to bring improvements to heat pump products

Desired Qualifications:

• BS in Engineering or Physics and 2 years of experience in thermal engineering OR MS/PhD in Engineering or Physics
• Fundamental understanding of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer
• Experience with analyzing data from physical sensors to draw conclusions about larger systems
• Experience with building/assembling/troubleshooting thermal and/or mechanical systems
• Experience with instrumentation and data collection (LabVIEW, Arduino, etc.)
• Capable of creating physics-based models using Matlab, Python, or similar
• Ability to communicate technical concepts to cross-functional audiences 

Bonus Qualifications:

• Heat pump, AC, or HVAC design experience
• Software development experience