Senior Thermal Systems Engineer

Full-time · On-site · Woodinville, WA

About Standard Thermal

Standard Thermal is developing and deploying the world’s lowest-cost thermal energy storage technology, using earth as a thermal battery. We deliver a year-round steady supply of thermal energy to industrial consumers by buffering solar PV energy through a large thermal battery. To do this, we are building and field-testing thermal systems that combine mechanical hardware, heat transfer, electrical power, instrumentation, controls, and standard heavy construction methods.

You will be a load-bearing member of a small, fast-moving team, with substantial influence over how Standard Thermal advances technology and commercial deployment in parallel. This role operates at the intersection of customers, commercial strategy, and engineering. You will help focus the company on the highest-leverage markets, customers, deployment pathways, and partnerships.

This is not a conventional business development role. We are looking for someone who can combine commercial judgement, technical curiosity, and strategic thinking to help turn a broadly applicable technology into a large-scale business.

What you will do

• Develop commercialization strategy: Identify and prioritize markets, geographies, customer segments, sequencing, and scale-up strategy that create the strongest path to large-scale adoption.
• Build customer pipeline: Identify, develop, and advance relationships with industrial customers and strategic partners.
• Develop and refine commercial models: Evaluate alternative business models, ownership models, financing pathways, and partnership structures for different customer segments and stages of deployment.
• Advance projects: Work with customers, vendors, and internal team to move projects from initial engagement to aligned commercial terms and to deployment planning.
• Build the ecosystem: Develop relationships with relevant industrial partners, project developers, EPCs, equipment suppliers, energy companies, utilities, financiers, and other organizations that can accelerate deployment.
• Represent the voice of the customer: Develop a deep understanding of customer use cases, economics, site constraints, and procurement processes to define requirements and priorities that inform product decisions.
• Partner deeply with engineering: Work directly with the technical team to understand system capabilities and tradeoffs, communicate market requirements, and ensure that engineering decisions are informed by customer use cases.
• Understand the economics: Leverage techno-economic models to understand project economics and cost sensitivities from first principles, and accurately communicate the relevant economics to customers and partners.

What we are looking for

• Demonstrated ability to develop and execute commercialization strategy for complex technology, energy, infrastructure, or other hardware businesses.
• Technical fluency. Able to develop a working understanding of engineering tradeoffs, energy flows, project economics, and technical constraints to engage credibly with customers, partners, and investors.
• Strong commercial judgement. Able to distinguish genuine scalable opportunities from distractions.
• Strategic/tactical balance. Equally comfortable developing a multi-year, multi-region commercialization strategy and advancing an immediate customer project.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills; able to communicate effectively with customers, partners, investors, and technical teams.
• Low ego, high ownership. Comfortable rapidly changing paths when evidence indicates, and asking for help or input when needed.
• Willingness to travel as needed to customer, partner, and project sites domestically and internationally.

Experience in industrial energy, thermal systems, industrial construction, project development, or related sectors is valuable but not required. We care more about a demonstrated track record of solving difficult commercial problems than about a particular career path.

Details: Competitive salary, equity, and benefits.

Interested? Send a resume and a short note about yourself to hiring@standardthermal.com. We are particularly interested to hear about past projects and significant accomplishments, including things you’ve done outside of work.

Full-time · On-site · Woodinville, WA

About Standard Thermal

Standard Thermal is developing and deploying the world’s lowest-cost thermal energy storage technology, using earth as a thermal battery. We deliver a year-round steady supply of thermal energy to industrial consumers by buffering solar PV energy through a large thermal battery. To do this, we are building and field-testing thermal systems that combine mechanical hardware, heat transfer, electrical power, instrumentation, controls, and standard heavy construction methods.

You will be a load-bearing member of a small, fast-moving team, with significant responsibility for the systems that we deploy. Systems you develop will ultimately be deployed at enormous scale, presenting a unique opportunity for individual contributions to have outsized impact.

What you will do

• Own problems end-to-end: Solve problems from first-principles reasoning through design, build, test, iteration, and scale-up.
• Design and build hardware: Ideate and build mechanical and electro-mechanical systems supporting ongoing development and field deployments.
• Cross disciplinary boundaries: Design and build systems that include mechanical assemblies, sensors, controllers, heaters, and other electrical/mechanical components.
• Simplify aggressively: Our cost requirements necessitate ruthless adherence to simplification.
• Scale what works: Help translate benchtop and numerical modeling results into fieldable and scalable systems, with attention to manufacturability, cost, schedule, reliability, and serviceability.
• Support field deployments: Travel as needed for building and commissioning test systems, and customer/vendor site visits.

What we are looking for

• BS/MS in mechanical or electrical engineering or related field, or equivalent practical experience. Capability is more important than credentials.
• Clear evidence that you enjoy building things. Past work projects, personal side projects, automotive work, Formula SAE, robotics, rocketry, or other similar hands-on experience all count.
• Demonstrated evidence of end-to-end problem solving.
• Broad foundation in physical sciences. Strong working knowledge of the governing principles of heat transfer, fluid mechanics, mechanics of materials, electrical circuits, and related fields.
• Fluency with engineering calculations. Comfortable rapidly bounding unfamiliar problems using hand calculations, order-of-magnitude estimates, and simple spreadsheet models before moving to detailed design or simulation.
• Quantitative sanity checking. Develop an independent expectation for what an answer should look like from first-principles reasoning, and recognize when a measurement, simulation, or vendor proposal is physically implausible.
• Comfort moving between mechanical design/CAD, electrical component selection, sensors/instrumentation, data acquisition, troubleshooting, and experimental work, with a preference for experience in industrial process environments.
• Bias towards practical utility and rapid learning. You care about whether the system works and is cost-effective in practice.
• Low ego, high ownership. Comfortable rapidly changing paths when evidence and test results indicate, and asking for help or input when needed.
• Eagerness to work hands-on in both lab and outdoor field environments and get dirty when the job requires.

Details: Competitive salary, equity, and benefits.

Interested? Send a resume and a short note about yourself to hiring@standardthermal.com. We are particularly interested to hear about past projects and significant accomplishments, including things you’ve done outside of work.

Full-time · On-site · Woodinville, WA

About Standard Thermal

Standard Thermal is developing and deploying the world’s lowest-cost thermal energy storage technology, using earth as a thermal battery. We deliver a year-round steady supply of thermal energy to industrial consumers by buffering solar PV energy through a large thermal battery. To do this, we are building and field-testing thermal systems that combine mechanical hardware, heat transfer, electrical power, instrumentation, controls, and standard heavy construction methods.

We are a small and fast-moving team, which means everyone has significant responsibility. In this role you will build prototype systems, run experiments, troubleshoot hardware, collect and interpret data, and help turn concepts into field-ready systems. You will work closely with design engineers, but will have substantial autonomy in completing day-to-day work.

What you will do

• Build prototype systems: Assemble mechanical, electrical, and thermal systems from drawings, sketches, and direction from engineers.
• Run and monitor experiments: Set up and execute tests in the lab, operate equipment, collect data, and document and interpret results.
• Document what matters: Create assembly instructions, design documentation, test procedures, drawings, and other documentation necessary for another competent person to reproduce the work.
• Improve and accelerate how we work: Identify simple ways to make recurring builds and tests faster and more reliable.
• Use the right amount of rigor: Some activities demand precision and careful planning and documentation. Other times, a quick test with off-the-shelf parts can answer important questions in a few hours.
• Support field deployments: Fabricate, test, document, and ship equipment destined for field sites and installations. Travel as needed to support field installations.

What we are looking for

• Strong mechanical and electrical intuition and background, and evidence that you enjoy building and fixing things.
• Experience assembling, testing, and troubleshooting mechanical and electrical systems, with a preference for expertise in industrial process environments.
• Ability to carefully follow drawings and documentation but also operate where there is minimal existing documentation.
• Bias towards action and prioritization. You keep important work moving and focus your effort on what advances the team’s objectives.
• Low ego, high ownership. Comfortable rapidly changing paths when evidence and test results indicate, and asking for help or input when needed.
• Comfortable working hands-on in both lab and outdoor field environments, and getting dirty when the job requires.
• Technical school, associate degree, military technical training, industry experience, or demonstrated capability are all appropriate backgrounds. We care substantially more about what you can do than what credentials you hold.

Experience with the following is highly useful but not required

• Instrumentation and data acquisition using thermocouples, pressure transducers, flow meters, and other industrial sensors and controllers.
• CAD and reading engineering drawings.
• PLCs or microcontrollers.
• Pumps, blowers, heaters, piping/ducting.
• 3D printing.

Details: Competitive salary, equity, and benefits.

Interested? Send a resume and a short note about yourself to hiring@standardthermal.com. We are particularly interested to hear about past projects and significant accomplishments, including things you’ve done outside of work.