About the role
Cowboy Space Corp. is building the infrastructure to power and connect the orbital economy. Our satellites operate in Low Earth Orbit to collect sunlight and enable a new class of capabilities—from powering on-orbit compute, to transmitting energy via infrared lasers (space-to-earth and space-to-space), powering on-orbit compute to delivering secure, high-bandwidth optical data. By rethinking how energy and data are generated and distributed in space, we’re unlocking entirely new ways to operate both in orbit and on Earth. Founded in 2024 by Baiju Bhatt (co-founder of Robinhood), Cowboy Space Corp. is backed by leading investors and built by a team from top aerospace and defense organizations. We’re moving quickly to solve complex technical challenges and build a new category of space infrastructure.
The Role As an Aerothermal Analysis Engineer you will be the technical lead for predicting and managing the aerodynamic heating environments on the external surfaces of our new launch vehicle. This role will focus on predicting and characterizing the aerothermal environments experienced during ascent and re-entry, driving the boundary conditions that define the vehicle’s external structures, including the main substrates and the required thermal protection system (TPS).
Responsibilities Environment Definition: Generate high-fidelity aerodynamic pressure and heating environments, for nominal and off-nominal conditions, for launch vehicle’s ascent and re-entry trajectories using engineering-level tools and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes. CFD Modeling & Simulation: Set up, execute, and post-process viscous, reacting-flow CFD simulations to characterize surface heating rates, pressure distributions, and boundary layer transition. TPS Sizing & Margin Management: Work closely with TPS and structures engineers to translate aeroheating predictions into material selection, sizing, and margin assessments. Aerothermal Database Management: Develop, maintain, and version-control the aeroheating database used across vehicle design cycles; define uncertainty bands and apply appropriate design factors. Test Planning & Correlation: Define ground-test
