Thermal Manufacturing Engineer - San Jose, United States
Originally posted 27 July 2026 by the employer.
Develop, qualify, and scale manufacturing processes for liquid cold plates and thermal management systems.
About the role
This role involves owning the development, qualification, and scaling of thermal management manufacturing processes for Etched's silicon-to-system products, focusing on liquid cooling systems, primarily cold plates.
What you'll do
- Own end-to-end manufacturing engineering for thermal components and assemblies, from NPI through mass production.
- Develop, qualify, and optimize cold plate fabrication processes including skiving, vacuum brazing, friction stir welding, diffusion bonding, gun drilling, and extrusion-based channel formation.
- Define process parameters, controls, and acceptance criteria for each manufacturing method and establish capability benchmarks (Cpk, yield, leak rate, flatness, pressure drop).
- Drive root cause analysis and corrective action for manufacturing defects such as leaks, delamination, warpage, insufficient bonding, and dimensional non-conformance.
- Evaluate and qualify new suppliers and manufacturing technologies for cold plates and thermal interface materials.
- Drive continuous improvement in cold plate cost, cycle time, and quality through systematic DOEs and process optimization.
What you'll need
- 7+ years of experience in manufacturing engineering, process engineering, or thermal systems manufacturing, with direct hands-on experience producing liquid cold plates or heat exchangers.
- Demonstrated expertise in two or more cold plate fabrication processes: skiving, vacuum brazing, friction stir welding, diffusion bonding, gun drilling, or extrusion-based channel formation.
- Strong understanding of aluminum and copper alloy properties, braze alloy selection, and metallurgical failure modes relevant to thermal hardware.
- Experience qualifying cold plate manufacturers and running process capability studies (Cpk, GR&R) for leak rate, flatness, pressure drop, and thermal resistance.
- Hands-on experience with cold plate inspection and test methods: helium leak testing, hydrostatic pressure testing, flow/pressure-drop characterization, flatness measurement.
- Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Manufacturing Engineering, or a related field.
Nice to have
- Prior experience in server, HPC, datacenter, or power electronics thermal management.
This role has been open 82 days — well above the 51-day median for Hardware Systems Engineering roles.
Hardware Systems Engineering · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
963
|
Median days open
51 d
|
Median salary
$156k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Etched | All employers we track in this specialty (963 roles · 102 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 6 | 963 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 42 | 6118 · 145 employers |
| Median days open | 138 d | 51 d (+87 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $156k |
Who's hiring in this category
- Intel Corporation · 73 open roles · median 36 d
- KLA Corporation · 65 open roles · median 44 d
- Teradyne · 57 open roles · median 30 d
- NVIDIA · 51 open roles · median 68 d
- Applied Materials · 50 open roles · median 66 d
- AMD · 47 open roles · median 50 d
How we counted: 963 open Hardware Systems Engineering (AI ML Hardware) roles from 102 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 18 Oct 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there — it is counted in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Figures refresh nightly.