Thermal Engineer for Actuator Cooling
Dexmate · Fremont Office · onsite
ABOUT DEXMATE
Dexmate is building the foundation for physical AI — combining a new generation of robots with a universal Physical AI OS, making robots as easy to build and deploy as software. Today, robotics is fragmented, slow, and closed: most builders are forced to reinvent the same stack again and again, and most ideas never make it past the prototype stage. We exist to change that. Our mission is to democratize robotics by lowering the barrier to entry, delivering a plug-and-play platform for developers, researchers, and enterprises, and cultivating an open ecosystem that accelerates the evolution of physical AI.
If you want to help shape the next layer of human capability — and believe the future of robotics should be built together, not in isolation — we'd love to build it with you.
The Role
We are looking for a Thermal Engineer to develop cooling solutions for compact robot actuators, with a focus on liquid cooling. You will own thermal models and cooling-system design, then validate them on working hardware. You will work across motor, drive and mechanical design to sustain performance over realistic robot duty cycles.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Translate motor and inverter losses and robot duty cycles into thermal requirements, boundary conditions and operating limits.
- Develop conjugate heat-transfer and CFD models alongside reduced-order thermal models; correlate them to instrumented hardware.
- Design cold plates, stator jackets and heat paths, and specify coolant flow, pressure drop, pump operating points and system heat-rejection needs.
- Develop coolant routing through moving joints with mechanical engineers, accounting for motion, serviceability, sealing, compatibility and leakage risks.
- Plan and run thermal characterization across ambient conditions and transient duty cycles; diagnose hot spots and validate design changes.
- Provide measured thermal limits and model inputs to drive and firmware engineers for derating behavior; support supplier and manufacturing validation.
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
- Hands-on thermal design and test experience with liquid-cooled electromechanical or power-electronics systems.
- Strong fundamentals in heat transfer, fluid mechanics, pressure-drop analysis and thermal resistance networks.
- Experience with conjugate heat-transfer or CFD tools such as Ansys Fluent, Star-CCM+ or equivalent, plus thermal-network modeling and experimental correlation.
- Ability to design practical cooling hardware and use thermocouples, flow and pressure measurements, or equivalent instrumentation to validate it.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience cooling motors, EV batteries, inverters, servo drives or compact robot joints.
- Experience with moving coolant lines, compact sealing interfaces, leak testing or coolant material compatibility.
- Experience with Motor-CAD thermal or equivalent reduced-order models, thermal test automation or manufacturing processes for cooling components.