Cooling Engineer | Propulsion
BETA Technologies
South Burlington, VT, USA
Posted on Jun 27, 2025
At BETA Technologies, we apply our intellectual curiosity, passion for aviation, and commitment to sustainability toward a shared mission of revolutionizing electric aviation. Regardless of the position one holds, each team member brings their talent and desire to positively impact the environment and lives of others in a refreshing, vibrant, and inclusive culture.
Not only do we design, analyze, build and test the motors and inverters, we also develop manufacturing tooling and validation equipment such as propeller stands, dynos, bench top test rigs. Our design to validation cycle is extremely rapid and we own it all. If you love to influence design, analyze, build, test and validate your ideas at a fast pace, you’ll be happy at Beta.
The Propulsion Cooling Engineer will contribute to the development of the cooling solutions for our Electric Propulsion units, from a blank page to a certified product. This cool engineer will help optimize the designs to meet performance requirements, optimizing the cooling path to minimize airflow while meeting efficiency and component temperature targets. Documenting the analyses, validating the boundary conditions and results by developing test plans and analyzing test data and correlating to the predictions is a key responsibility for this position.
How you will contribute to revolutionizing electric aviation:
- Assess, understand and challenge boundary conditions from interfacing groups
- Perform hand calcs, physics based simulations and CFD to ensure thermal objectives are met
- Document analyses for internal reviews and certification purposes
- Support definition of test plans for full engine tests on test stand or on aircraft to verify analyses
- Collaborate with design to ensure the most efficient products are defined
- Collaborate with the systems and certification team to ensure certifiability of products
Minimum Qualifications:
- Ability to guide the design team in optimizing the cooling flowpath and performing trades on mechanical architecture to improve flow
- Ability to improve the design and come up with innovative, pragmatic and manufacturable solutions based on CFD results
- Ability to loft complex surfaces using CAD (Catia or equivalent)
- Ability to use meanline software (Bladegen, Vista or similar) to design efficient airfoils for air cooling fans, impellers, vanes, sized for the EPU conditions
- Ability to perform conjugate heat transfer simulations (preferably with matlab) to simulate thermal performance while sizing new systems. These simulations are informed by existing test data, extrapolations and physics based models developed by the cooling engineer
- Good team, communication and leadership skills required
- Ability to work with minimal supervision and identify strategies to remove roadblocks is paramount
- Mental flexibility and the ability to change direction based on new information is an absolute must in our fast paced environment
- Ability to work hard to meet our ambitious goals and tight deadlines
- Google G -Suite including drive, mail, calendar, docs, sheets, slides, charts, hangouts; slack, application lifecycle
Above and Beyond Qualifications:
- Experience with CFD package (FloEFD, Fluent, etc)
- Experience with air cooling rotating machinery
- Experience with electrical motors, inverters
Physical Demands and Work Environment:
The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the functions. While performing the duties of this position, the employee is regularly required to talk or hear. The employee frequently is required to use hands or fingers, handle or feel objects, tools, or controls. The employee is occasionally required to stand; walk; sit; and reach with hands and arms. The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this position include close vision, distance vision, and the ability to adjust focus. The noise level in the work environment is usually low to moderate.
Build electric airplanes with us!
We encourage all driven candidates to apply, even if they do not meet every listed qualification.
We are an equal opportunity employer. Employment decisions are based on merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner on race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, disability, veteran or military status, genetic information, pregnancy, or any other protected characteristic under federal, state, or local law. BETA complies with all applicable federal, state and local non-discrimination laws and does not tolerate discrimination of any kind in our workplace.
Employment offers are contingent upon the successful completion of a background check. BETA Technologies participates in E-Verify.