Demo

Thermal/Mechanical Lead

Rivos
Santa Clara, CA Full Time
POSTED ON 8/30/2025
AVAILABLE BEFORE 10/30/2025

The Thermal/Mechanical Architect will lead thermal and mechanical design from Silicon to System on Rivos hardware. This position includes both individual contributor responsibilities and managing/growing a small team of engineers.

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Responsibilities
  • As Thermal lead, you will own or participate in the following: 
  • Architect next generation thermal (aggressive air cooling, single/two phase liquid cooling, potentially immersion) and mechanical solutions with multiple constraints in data center servers at the component, board and chassis levels. Own the specification for the Rivos Silicon and thermal components for customers.
  • Collaborate with external suppliers to source thermal components (heatsinks, fans, TIM, coldplate, novel chip coolers, etc). Understand both conventional and new solutions and make recommendations.
  • Initiate, build, update complex thermal models with attention to detail. Use simulation results to guide the Silicon team.
  • Lead a team of thermal, mechanical and hardware engineers to design and develop state-of-the-art cooling and mechanical solutions and integrate them to Rivos enclosures. As a lead, you will have management responsibility to grow this team, provide mentorship and feedback.
  • Collaborate with the other engineering teams (Packaging, Reliability, SI/PI, Power, General EE), present design updates, and exchange feedback to initiate, develop and revise thermal and mechanical design.
  • Identify needs, follow OCP guidelines/meetings and industry trends, to strategize, and execute the Rivos roadmap and portfolio in thermal, mechanical, and hardware engineering.
  • Generate and maintain thermal/mechanical BOM’s for multiple projects.
  • Collaborate with Technical Program Manager (TPM) on the schedules, volumes, lead times and budgets.
  • Collaborate with CM, OEM and ODM’s to develop mockups, test samples and production parts/assemblies.
  • Build physical prototype assemblies and instrument those assemblies for testing. Carry out testing, summarize and correlate data, modify, and improve our systems.


Requirements
  • Experienced with technical and team leadership in engineering design and development teams.  Industry leadership in thermal design of electronics with a track record of technical publications and patents.
  • Expert in numerical and computational methods, CFD and FEA. Must be an avid user of Ansys Suite of simulation tools including IcePak and Ansys Mechanical.
  • Proficient user of one of the major MCAD/PLM tools (Creo/Windchill, Solidworks, NX/Teamcenter)Strategic thinker with vision and ability to think at both component and system levels.
  • Experienced in working with CM, OEM and ODM’s.
  • Strong interest in emerging technologies, and enthusiastic about exploring, learning new techniques and applying them to product design.  Team player with good communication and interpersonal skills.
  • Passionate for working in a startup environment.
  • Strong analytical, written and oral communication skills.
  • Useful to have familiarity with CPU socket design/assemblies
  • Useful to have familiarity with OCP mechanical design guidelines and design of Colo boxes and racks.
  • Useful to have familiarity with semiconductor packaging.  
  • Useful to have familiarity with various fabrication processes including sheet metal, injection, molding, soft and hard tooling.


Education and Experience
  • Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering or equivalent practical experience with an emphasis on conjugate heat transfer.
  • Minimum of 15 years of experience in cooling system design and packaging of electronics for data centers with experience in liquid cooling


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