---
title: 'Lead Thermal Design Engineer (Austin, TX) at Exowatt'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/lead-thermal-design-engineer-austin-tx-exowatt-austin-d864a448zc4h'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-07'
---

# Lead Thermal Design Engineer (Austin, TX) at Exowatt

- **Company:** Exowatt
- **Location:** Austin, TX
- **Compensation:** $180–$215
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-01-20
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/exowatt/d16f6d5a-cab8-4363-a60f-1bed9df73bf8

## Job description

Exowatt is revolutionizing the energy landscape for the AI era with our groundbreaking P3 system that captures solar energy, stores it as heat, and generates electricity on demand. Founded in 2023 and backed by leading investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Sam Altman, and Felicis, we're committed to providing clean, modular, and scalable power that meets the rapidly growing demands of AI infrastructure. Our mission is to make sustainable renewable energy always available and almost free, enabling technological advancement while protecting our planet.

We are seeking a Lead Thermal Design Engineer to lead the design, development, and optimization of solar thermal receivers for our energy systems. In this role, you will own the engineering of components that absorb and transfer high-flux solar radiation into our thermal storage systems. You will work at the intersection of heat transfer, materials science, and optical engineering to push the boundaries of receiver efficiency, durability, and cost-effectiveness.

This position is based in Austin, TX. If hired for this role, relocation to Austin, TX is required. We provide relocation assistance.

## Key Responsibilities

- Own the solar thermal receiver end to end architecture, design, analysis, prototyping, and qualification for a first-of-its-kind energy product, with direct influence on system-level cost and performance targets
- Set the technical direction for receiver development: define requirements, drive design reviews, and make the calls on architecture trade-offs (cavity, external, tubular, particle-based) that determine how much of the sun we capture
- Build and validate thermal and optical models, flux distribution, heat transfer efficiency, thermal stress, and use them to iterate designs in days, not quarters
- Select and qualify materials that survive 600°C–1000°C+, extreme thermal cycling, and concentrated solar flux, working hands-on with ceramics, refractory metals, and advanced alloys
- Design, run, and learn from high-flux prototype testing and accelerated life evaluation, and you'll see your hardware tested under real sun, not just in simulation
- Partner closely with the solar collection, controls, heat exchanger, and thermal storage teams to optimize aiming strategies, flux distribution, and downstream integration as one system
- Drive design-for-manufacturing from day one so the receiver scales from prototype to mass production at a cost the grid has never seen
- Shape the receiver roadmap by tracking and pulling in advances in selective absorbers, high-temperature coatings, and receiver technology, and grow the team around you as we scale

Required Qualifications

- Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Materials Science, or a related field, or equivalent demonstrated engineering depth
- 7+ years designing high-temperature thermal hardware — solar receivers, heat exchangers, combustors, furnaces, propulsion components, or comparable systems operating at extreme heat flux
- Deep command of heat transfer (conduction, convection, radiation), thermodynamics, and fluid mechanics, and the judgment to know when a hand calc beats a week of simulation
- Proficiency with thermal and structural simulation tools (ANSYS, COMSOL, SolarPILOT, or equivalent), grounded in physical intuition rather than dependent on it
- Hands-on experience with high-temperature materials like ceramics, refractory metals, advanced alloys up to and including selection, qualification, and failure analysis
- A track record of taking hardware from concept through prototype testing into production, and the scars to prove it

## Preferred Qualifications

- Advanced degree (MS/PhD) in a relevant discipline
- Direct experience designing solar thermal receivers
- Experience with molten salt, liquid sodium, or particle-based heat transfer media
- Knowledge of selective absorber coatings and high-temperature surface treatments
- Familiarity with optical modeling and ray-tracing tools for flux analysis, or solar field aiming-point optimization
- Publications or patents in solar thermal or high-temperature receiver technology
- Experience thriving in an early-stage, fast-iteration hardware environment where you set the standard rather than follow one

## About Exowatt

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Exowatt designs and manufactures modular, full-stack solar energy systems that capture solar energy, store it as heat, and dispatch electricity on demand to power energy-intensive infrastructure like AI data centers.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: Miami, FL, USA
- **Founded**: 2023 (implied by company narrative)
- **Founders**: Not publicly disclosed on the website or job postings

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Renewable Energy, Clean Technology, Energy Storage, AI Infrastructure.
- **Target customers**: B2B — specifically AI data centers, high-performance computing (HPC) data centers, and utility-scale energy projects. They also target utility companies and industrial sites with high energy demands.
- **Mission or purpose statement**: "Our mission is to deliver ultra-low-cost, reliable power that fuels global AI infrastructure while protecting our planet" — as stated by the founders on their vision page.

## Products & Services
- **Exowatt P3**: The flagship product, a "dispatchable solar" system. It is a modular, full-stack energy system that captures solar energy using custom optical lenses (Fresnel lenses), stores it as heat in a proprietary high-temperature sensible heat battery (long-duration energy storage), and converts it into electricity on demand via a proprietary heat engine. It is designed to provide up to 24 hours of dispatchable energy, essentially serving as a baseload power source. The system can be deployed behind the meter (BTM) to reduce interconnection wait times, and is built in the USA without rare earth minerals.
- **Energy Optimization Software**: Integrated software platform for real-time monitoring, control, and automation of Exowatt P3 systems. Enables intelligent dispatch, integration with other energy assets (solar PV, wind, natural gas, grid), and participation in arbitrage and virtual power plants (VPPs).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed.
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding — $70 million Series A round announced on April 22, 2025 [exowatt.com](https://www.exowatt.com/faq).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not named on the website (the funding announcement and Crunchbase profile are referenced but not detailed on the main site). The company claims a "Made in the USA" supply chain and mentions partnerships with utility companies and data center operators.
- **Growth Signals**: 
    - Raised a significant $70M Series A in early 2025, signaling strong investor confidence.
    - Actively hiring across multiple key engineering and leadership roles (Electrical, Mechanical, Controls, Power Electronics) in two locations (Miami, FL and Austin, TX).
    - Targeting the rapidly expanding AI and HPC data center market, which has an enormous and growing demand for clean, dispatchable power.
    - Their product’s "Bring Your Own Power" (BYOP) capability directly addresses the critical bottleneck of long interconnection queues for new data centers, a major market pain point.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Dispatchable Solar + Storage**: Unlike standard solar PV, Exowatt's system can provide 24/7 baseload power by storing solar energy as heat and generating electricity on demand, solving the intermittency problem of renewables.
- **Expedited Time-to-Power**: The ability to deploy fully behind the meter allows customers to bypass lengthy utility interconnection queues, accelerating project timelines for energy-intensive facilities like data centers.
- **No Rare Earth Minerals**: The system is built with abundant, domestically sourced materials, avoiding supply chain vulnerabilities and environmental concerns associated with rare earth mining.
- **Modular & Scalable**: Factory-built modules allow for linear scaling, enabling customers to start small and expand capacity as their energy needs grow.
- **30-Year Lifespan**: Designed for low maintenance and a 30-year operational life, providing long-term reliability.

## Strategic Focus
- **Targeting the AI Energy Boom**: Exowatt is squarely focused on providing clean, reliable, and rapidly deployable power to solve the massive energy demands of AI and HPC data centers.
- **U.S. Manufacturing & Energy Independence**: The company is prioritizing domestic manufacturing to ensure quality, supply chain security, and alignment with national energy independence goals.
- **Scaling Rapidly to Meet Demand**: With a $70M Series A, the focus is likely on scaling manufacturing, building out their deployment pipeline with initial customers, and expanding the engineering team to accelerate product development and deployment.

## Why Work Here
- **High-Impact Mission**: The opportunity to work on a critical technology that directly enables the AI revolution by solving its most fundamental constraint: sustainable, scalable power.
- **High-Performance Team**: The company describes itself as a "high-performance team of engineers, scientists, and builders pushing the boundaries of what’s possible," indicating a fast-paced, ambitious environment.
- **On-Site Engineering Roles**: The posted positions (Electrical Engineer, Lead Mechanical Engineer, Lead Controls & Firmware Engineer) are full-time and on-site in either **Miami, FL** or **Austin, TX**. No remote or hybrid options are visible in current job listings.
- **Competitive Benefits**: Benefits include comprehensive healthcare, flexible PTO, and team-wide equity [exowatt.com/careers](https://www.exowatt.com/careers).
- **Small, Fast-Moving Company**: With a Series A funding, this is an early-stage company, offering roles with high ownership, influence, and the chance to build foundational systems.

## Sources
1. [exowatt.com](https://www.exowatt.com/?gad_campaignid=21982037242)
2. [exowatt.com](https://www.exowatt.com/faq)
3. [exowatt.com](https://www.exowatt.com/vision)
4. [exowatt.com](https://www.exowatt.com/careers)
5. [jobs.lever.co](https://jobs.lever.co/exowatt)

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