Team Lead - Thermofluids Analysis

ABOUT ROCKET LAB Rocket Lab is the end-to-end space company building rockets, spacecraft, and critical subsystems that keep the world connected, protected, expand humanity’s reach to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. We move fast, build real hardware for meaningful missions, and make the impossible routine. Come shape the future with us. While other companies talk about it, we do it! NEUTRON Rocket Lab’s Neutron team is responsible for bringing our new large rocket Neutron and its launch and test sites to life. From designing and testing Neutron’s structures and components, to firing up its new Archimedes engines, to setting up Neutron’s launch pads and test sites across the United States, joining the Neutron team is your opportunity to help launch a new large rocket for the very first time. TEAM LEAD - THERMOFLUIDS ANALYSIS We're looking for a Team Lead to head up our Thermofluids Analysis team, taking ownership of all thermodynamics and fluid mechanics across our launch systems. In this role, you'll lead a multidisciplinary team spanning Aeroscience, Thermal, and Propellant analysis, representing these domains to the program’s product-focused teams. You'll inform and direct concept-level trades around architecture, operation, and capability; evaluate systems for their performance, environments, and characteristics; and use those insights to shape requirements and drive risk posture across the program. Beyond the technical, you'll be responsible for building and developing the team itself—mentoring and supporting your direct reports, identifying skills gaps, meeting resourcing needs, and ensuring the successful delivery of key strategic engineering projects. You'll also set the appropriate level of fidelity needed to make informed engineering decisions, develop and maintain the tools and capabilities that underpin the team's analyses, and engage stakeholders across the organisation to unlock progress. This role is based in Auckland, New Zealand. WHAT YOU'LL GET TO DO: • Leadership & Team Development • Manage, mentor, and develop your direct reports—providing coaching, timely feedback, and professional development opportunities while identifying skills gaps to drive cross-functional training • Ensure the successful delivery of key strategic engineering projects, negotiating resource and priority across the organization • Provide regular project status updates, conduct peer reviews, and produce qualification test levels through consistent application of approved margining approaches • Aeroscience • Generate aerotables and characterise vehicle performance—covering stability, control authority, loads, pressure distributions, and aerodynamic design of vehicle control surfaces • Perform, validate, and document CFD analyses of external flow across hypersonic, transonic and subsonic regimes, and characterise aerodynamic and heating environments, transients, and separation events • Model plumes and plume interactions (base heating, PIFS, impingement) and define re-entry architecture, including ballistic coefficients, ConOps, and compartment venting • Thermal • Own system thermal design across ground, flight, and in-space operations, including TPS response, compartment thermals, insulation, and component thermal modelling • Perform heat transfer simulations (conduction, convection, radiation) and characterise thermal environments, developing design guidelines and mitigations • Model HVAC and cavity conditioning (flow/temperature specification, pressure drop, flammability, cleanliness, humidity) and support payload integration and customer ITAs • Propellant • Own propellant delivery and management—covering temperatures and stratification, cavitation margin, transients, slosh, PMD design, settling, and in-space thermodynamics—and perform CFD of internal fluid systems (compressible and incompressible flow) • Address depletion, residuals, and utilisation control, and own tank pressurisation, including pressurant budgets, in-tank thermodynamics, and autogenous system sizing • Design RCS systems, including N2 budget, thruster specification, and flow modelling of valves and lines • Analysis & Data • Work closely with design and test engineers to iterate design concepts, determine test requirements, and demonstrate positive margins through numerical analysis, and physical test • Process and interpret ground test and flight data—confirming MPE bounds, detecting out-of-family results, and resolving sensor configuration issues YOU'LL BRING THESE QUALIFICATIONS: • A degree in Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering or similar field • 5+ years industry experience, ideally from the Aerospace, Automotive, or Marine industries • A keen physics and first principles-based approach to problem solving • Experience with one or more industry standard CFD packages: Fluent, CFX, STAR-CCM+ • Experience with one or more industry standard thermal modelling packages: Thermal Desktop, THERMICA, NX SST • Expertise in engineering programming, especially using Python (including Python packages numpy, pandas, scipy, matplotlib, etc.) • Demonstrated ability executing to changing deadlines in a high-pressure and fast-paced work environment THESE QUALIFICATIONS WOULD BE NICE TO HAVE: • Experience with sensor selection and data post-processing/ interpretation (accelerometers, strain gauges, thermocouples etc.) • Experience using NX CAD and Teamcenter packages (or comparable industry standard packages) with emphasis on model interrogation and defeaturing for subsequent analysis • Experience in mentoring junior engineers If the above sounds like you apply now! WHAT TO EXPECT We’re on a mission to unlock the potential of space to improve life on Earth, but that’s not an easy task. It takes hard work, determination, relentless innovation, teamwork, grit, and an unwavering commitment to achieving what others often deem impossible. Our people out-think, out-work, and out-pace. We pride ourselves o