Principal Engineer

About the role: The Principal Thermofluids Engineer is responsible for the design, analysis and optimisation of advanced liquid-cooling solutions for high-performance IT equipment, including CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, ASICs, DIMMs, storage and networking hardware. The role ensures Iceotope’s systems deliver best-in-class thermal performance, energy efficiency and reliability, while enabling circularity and energy reuse in data centre and edge applications.

What you’ll do:

• Own the end-to-end thermal and fluid design of novel liquid-cooling solutions for high-power IT hardware, from concept through to validation and deployment.
• Specify and select internal components (heatsinks, cold plates, heat exchangers, pumps, valves, manifolds and hydraulic circuits) to achieve target temperatures, flow distribution and pressure drops.
• Define and recommend external system components (CDUs, chillers, dry coolers, strainers, heat rejection units) so that Iceotope equipment receives coolant at the correct temperature, pressure, flow rate and quality.
• Perform CFD and 1D system simulations (e.g. for immersion tanks, cold plates, manifolds and facility loops), including model setup, solution strategies, post-processing and correlation with test data.
• Provide technical leadership on fluid mechanics, heat transfer and liquid-cooling technologies, acting as the go-to subject matter expert for engineering, product and customer-facing teams.
• Work closely with Mechanical, Electronics, Systems and Manufacturing Engineering to integrate liquid-cooling solutions into product designs, balancing performance, cost, manufacturability and serviceability.
• Support the development of new dielectric cooling technologies, heatsinks, cold plates and system topologies to keep Iceotope at the forefront of direct-to-chip and immersion liquid-cooling innovation.
• Define test plans and support lab and field validation of thermal and hydraulic performance; use results to calibrate models and refine design rules and best practices.
• Prepare high-quality technical documentation, design reports, specifications and customer-facing materials that clearly communicate system performance and design intent.
• Act as a technical point of contact in customer and partner engagements, including data centre operators, hyperscalers, OEMs and technology partners.
• Mentor and coach junior engineers in thermofluids, CFD methods, design processes and good engineering practices.

What you’ll bring:

• Degree (or equivalent) in Mechanical Engineering or a closely related discipline, with Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics as core components; a higher degree or PhD in a relevant area is advantageous.
• Extensive industrial experience (10+ years) working on heat transfer and fluid-flow calculations, ideally in electronics, data centre, power, automotive, aerospace or similar high-performance applications.
• Deep understanding of convective and conductive heat transfer, boiling and phase-change behaviour, and the key parameters that drive thermal performance across different materials and geometries.
• Hands-on experience with commercial CFD tools (3D and/or 1D) for thermal and flow simulations.
• Track record of working effectively in multi-disciplinary engineering teams, concise communication and a collaborative approach.
• A pragmatic, delivery-focused mindset: comfortable balancing theory and modelling with real-world constraints, and able to make informed trade-offs that support business and customer goals.

Nice to have:

• Experience in electronics cooling, high-density compute, data centres or telecoms infrastructure, particularly with immersion, cold-plate or direct-to-chip liquid-cooling technologies.
• Proficiency with mechanical CAD (e.g. SolidWorks) for communicating and reviewing designs with the wider engineering team and suppliers.
• Familiarity with dielectric fluids, two-phase cooling, or other advanced cooling technologies used in next-generation IT and power electronics.