---
title: 'Staff Thermal Systems Integration Engineer at Rhoda AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-thermal-systems-integration-engineer-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-h0adk89xs839'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-16'
---

# Staff Thermal Systems Integration Engineer at Rhoda AI

- **Company:** Rhoda AI
- **Location:** Mountain View, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-09-09
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-16
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/rhoda-ai/e620a870-924d-4ac4-8313-06fec73eb48a

## Job description

At Rhoda AI, we’re building the next generation of generalist intelligent robots. We own the full robotics stack from high-performance hardware and robot systems to the infrastructure and state-of-the-art foundation world models that control our robots. Our robots are designed to be generalists capable of operating in complex, real-world environments and handling long-tail edge cases, made possible by our cutting edge research and end-to-end system design. We've raised over $450M and are investing aggressively in model research, infrastructure, hardware development, and manufacturing scale-up to make generalist robotics a reality.

## The Role

We're looking for a Staff Thermal Systems Integration Engineer to own thermal management across our entire robot platform. This role spans system-level thermal architecture, detailed thermal modeling and simulation, integration with mechanical design, coordination with controls on thermal management strategies, and validation across diverse operating environments. You'll work at the intersection of hardware design, control systems, and safety—defining thermal requirements, ensuring cooling solutions are architected correctly, and proving through simulation and test that the system meets reliability and uptime targets. This is a highly cross-functional role requiring deep collaboration with Hardware, Software, Controls, Systems Integration, Safety, and Product teams.

## What You'll Do

- Develop system-level thermal requirements and decompose to subsystems and components; own thermal management of the entire robot platform including all cooling devices, thermal paths, and heat dissipation strategies.
- Partner with Hardware sub-teams (structures, actuators, electrical) from design review and release, ensuring thermal requirements are met in implementation and cooling device placement and sizing are optimized.
- Create detailed thermal simulations (including computational fluid dynamics where appropriate) to validate designs; lead thermal verification across diverse operating environments and use cases against reliability and uptime targets.
- Collaborate with Control Engineers to develop thermal management algorithms, derating, and shutdown strategies; work with Safety Engineers to integrate thermal constraints into system safety analyses and ensure correct behavior implementation.
- Validate subsystem and robot-level thermal performance, documenting thermal specifications, analyses, simulation results, and verification test plans for regulatory and design review traceability.
- Provide technical guidance on thermal design principles, best practices, and lessons learned to support the organization in thermally sound decision-making.

## What We're Looking For

- At least 10 years of related experience of thermal systems analysis, including heat transfer principles, thermal modeling, and cooling device design and selection.
- Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, or closely related engineering discipline.
- Hands-on experience with thermal simulation tools for simulating heat loading and validating the impact of cooling devices and thermal management strategies.
- Strong systems-thinking: ability to reason across mechanical, electrical, and control layers to identify thermal constraints and optimize integrated thermal solutions.
- Experience decomposing system-level thermal requirements into component and subsystem specifications.
- Proven ability to work cross-functionally with Hardware, Controls, Safety, and Product teams to drive alignment on thermal architecture and constraints.
- Strong troubleshooting and root-cause analysis instincts for thermal issues—you follow the evidence and push until you understand the real problem.
- Excellent communication skills; comfortable engaging Hardware, Controls, Safety, Systems Integration, and Product stakeholders as peers and translating between disciplines.

## Nice to Have

- Experience with mainstream CFD tools (ANSYS Fluent, COMSOL, OpenFOAM, or similar) and advanced thermal simulation techniques.
- Proficiency in MATLAB / Simulink for thermal modeling, control algorithm development, or co-simulation environments.
- Experience with Python for thermal data analysis, automation, or custom tooling.
- Exposure to functional safety standards (ISO 26262, IEC 61508) and regulated product development.
- Experience with requirements management and traceability tooling (Flow, DOORS, Jama, Polarion, or similar).
- Background in robotics, embedded systems, or high-performance hardware platforms.
- Prior experience supporting products in the field and turning field-observed thermal issues into durable engineering improvements.

## About Rhoda AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Rhoda AI builds robot foundation models that learn from internet-scale video to enable manipulation-capable robots to generalize in real-world industrial environments.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed + Series A; $680M total funding)
- **Headquarters**: Palo Alto, CA, United States
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Jagdeep Singh (CEO), Eric Chan (Chief Scientist), Changan Chen (Chief Research Officer), Andrew Wooten, Gordon Wetzstein (Scientific Advisor) [rhoda.ai/team](https://www.rhoda.ai/team)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Hardware
- **Target customers**: B2B – industrial enterprises in automotive, manufacturing, logistics, and e-commerce
- **Mission/purpose**: “Building at the frontier of embodied intelligence” and “Designing intelligence for the real world” – deploying general-purpose robot foundation models that adapt to the variability of commercial and industrial environments. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/) | [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai)

## Products & Services
- **Rhoda Robot Platform (Hardware + Software)**: A turnkey robotic system with custom actuators (25kg rated, 40kg peak payload), safety-rated vision, wheel-base, and brakes in every actuator. The platform runs the **Direct Video Action** model, which pre-trains on over a million real-world videos and post-trains on task-specific robot data. Long-context windows enable single-shot learning from human demonstrations without retraining. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)
- **FutureVision Intelligence Layer**: A proprietary architecture that handles real-world industrial tasks autonomously by generalizing beyond conventional VLA pipelines. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)
- **Deployment Services**: End-to-end solutions for tasks such as returns processing, bearing decanting, container breakdown, and material transport in logistics and e-commerce facilities. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding **$680M** – Seed round $67.4M (April 2024), Series A $162.6M (April 2025), and Series A $450M (March 2026) with 4 investors. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not individually named in available sources; partners include customers in automotive, manufacturing, logistics, and e-commerce. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount growth of **+20% monthly** (LinkedIn reports 55 employees; Built In reports 73 employees – conflicting data). Talent sourced from companies like QuantumScape, Flexiv Robotics, Scale AI, Google, Meta, NVIDIA, and Stanford University. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai) | [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/rhoda-ai)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Direct Video Action architecture** with web-scale video pre-training gives a strong prior on motion, physics, and dynamics, enabling generalization beyond lab settings.
- **Custom high-performance actuators** (25kg rated, 40kg peak) with safety-rated brakes and vision – designed for 3+ years of continuous operation at rated payload.
- **Long-context in-context learning** allows the robot to perform tasks single-shot from human demonstrations without retraining.
- **Turnkey industrial deployments** that handle ambiguity and variability (e.g., debris, transparent bags, heavy boxes) – tasks customers initially believed could not be automated. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling robot intelligence through a pre-training/post-training paradigm, moving from controlled labs to reliable production environments.
- Expanding commercial deployments across automotive, manufacturing, logistics, and e-commerce verticals.
- Pursuing a path to **physical AGI** by combining foundation models with custom hardware for real-world adaptability. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/)

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “Building at the frontier of embodied intelligence” – emphasis on hard problems, first-principles thinking, and category-defining systems. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai)
- **Work policy**: Hybrid workspace (employees combine remote and on-site work), with offices in Mountain View and Palo Alto, CA. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/rhoda-ai)
- **Engineering culture**: Strong research focus (Chief Research Officer, Chief Scientist, many research engineers/scientists). Recent job postings include Research Scientist, Robot Perception Engineer, Mechanical Engineer, Fullstack Engineer, and Product Manager. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/rhoda-ai)
- **Notable perks**: Not explicitly listed, but the company is well-funded ($680M) and at an early stage (founded 2024), offering significant growth opportunity and impact.

## Sources
1. [rhoda.ai](https://www.rhoda.ai/) – Company website (product, technology, commercial applications)
2. [rhoda.ai/careers](https://www.rhoda.ai/careers) – Careers page
3. [rhoda.ai/team](https://www.rhoda.ai/team) – Leadership team and co-founders
4. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/rhoda-ai) – Built In profile (employee count, offices, job listings, hybrid policy)
5. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rhoda-ai) – LinkedIn company page (funding, headcount, executive list, talent sources)

## Other roles at Rhoda AI

- [Field Robotics Deployment Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/field-robotics-deployment-lead-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-v91gfb5byq4a) — Mountain View, CA
- [Research Evaluation Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/research-evaluation-lead-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-6jz1qjdqy7h3) — Mountain View, CA
- [Senior UX/UI Designer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-ux-ui-designer-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-tb6zs4gkw722) — Mountain View, CA
- [Senior MTS: TPM - Industrial Programs](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-mts-tpm-industrial-programs-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-7t0wq6pkbk2t) — Mountain View, CA
- [Robotics Test Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/robotics-test-engineer-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-fawz7jcaj9pv) — Mountain View, CA
- [Senior Data Project Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-data-project-manager-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-3r8qd12vvp3g) — Mountain View, CA
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- [Supply Chain Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/supply-chain-manager-rhoda-ai-mountain-view-at62gnb3hppz) — Mountain View, CA
- [Robot Pilot](https://feeny.ai/job/robot-pilot-rhoda-ai-munich-ae615mvnydam) — Munich, Germany
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