Panthalassa

Panthalassa

Senior Computational Engineer

Portland, OR · Senior · Full-time

Sponsorship not specified$155k-$200kDetected 67 days ago
PythonJavaC++BashLinuxSolidWorksCFDMechanical DesignAerospace EngineeringResearchLeadershipCommunicationMentoringPublic SpeakingAdaptabilityRenewable Energy

About the role

  • Our focus is on capturing civilizational levels of ultra-low-cost renewable energy for applications including computing and affordable renewable fuels delivered to shore.
  • The company is a public benefit corporation headquartered in Portland, Oregon, and backed by leading venture capitalists, philanthropic investors, university endowments, and private investment offices.
  • We operate as an idea meritocracy in which the best ideas change the company's direction on a regular basis.

Responsibilities

  • Own the CFD-based performance validation process for optimized marine system designs, including geometry preparation, meshing, solver setup, execution, debugging, post-processing, visualization, and reporting.
  • Develop, maintain, and continuously improve CFD validation workflows and automation pipelines with support from other engineers and software developers.
  • Refine and extend internal validation standards to ensure CFD results are accurate, converged, and physically meaningful for design and operational decision-making.
  • Develop clear visualizations, dashboards, plots, technical memos, and presentations that communicate simulation results, limitations, uncertainties, and recommended actions.
  • Collaborate closely with optimization, controls, mechanical engineering, metocean data, fleet simulation, and experimental teams to close the loop between predicted and measured performance.
  • Improve team velocity by increasing automation, reducing manual handoffs, documenting best practices, and developing reusable simulation templates.
  • Demonstrated ability to independently own and drive complex technical projects to completion.

Requirements

  • Bachelor's degree in Ocean Engineering, Naval Architecture, Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Physics, Applied Mathematics, or a similar field.
  • Significant experience running end-to-end CFD simulations for real engineering systems.
  • Experience using at least one major RANS-based CFD tool such as Helyx, OpenFOAM, or Star-CCM+.
  • Ability to diagnose and resolve CFD issues involving meshing, boundary conditions, convergence, numerical stability, turbulence modeling, and post-processing.
  • Strong understanding of verification and validation principles, including grid convergence, sensitivity studies, uncertainty, and comparison against experimental or field data.
  • Experience processing, visualizing, and interpreting complex simulation datasets.
  • Working knowledge of Linux environments, scripting workflows, and HPC-based simulation execution.
  • Ability to use first-principles reasoning to determine when simulation results are physically meaningful and when they require further investigation.
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical results and limitations to multidisciplinary teams.

Nice to have

  • Master's or PhD in Ocean Engineering, Naval Architecture, Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Physics, Applied Mathematics, or a similar field.
  • 5+ years of industry or research experience in CFD, marine hydrodynamics, naval architecture, offshore engineering, turbomachinery, propulsion, or related fields.
  • Experience with marine CFD, offshore systems, free-surface flows, multiphase flows, fluid-structure interaction, propulsion, wave-structure interaction, or complex metocean environments.
  • Experience using multiple CFD tools, especially Helyx, OpenFOAM and Star-CCM+.
  • Experience with Python, C++, Julia, Java, Bash, or other programming languages used in engineering simulation workflows.
  • Experience comparing simulations to sea-trial data, wave basin data, tow tank data, or other physical test data.
  • Experience working with metocean data, reanalysis datasets, wave spectra, current profiles, wind data, or measured ocean data.
  • Working knowledge of BEM, reduced-order models, time-domain simulation, or optimization workflows.

Compensation

  • Compensation and Benefits

Benefits

  • Equity in the company.
  • We're all owners and if we're successful, this equity should be far and away the most valuable component of your compensation.
  • A benefits package that helps you take care of yourself and your family, including:
  • Flexible paid time off
  • Health insurance (the company pays 100% of gold level PPO plan for full time employees, their partners, and dependents)
  • Dental insurance (the company pays 100% for full time employees and 100% for their partners and dependents)
  • Vision insurance (the company pays 100% for full time employees, their partners, and dependents)
  • Disability insurance (the company pays 100% for a policy to provide long term financial support if you become disabled)
  • Ability to contribute to tax-advantaged accounts, including 401(k), health FSA, and dependent care FSA

Company info

  • We are a renewable energy and ocean technology company committed to rapidly developing and deploying technologies that will ensure a sustainable future for Earth by unlocking the vast energy potential of its oceans.
  • About the Job
  • As a Senior Computational Engineer, you will lead and improve the use of high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to validate the performance of optimized marine system designs.
  • You will serve as the bridge between fast-running reduced-order simulations, mechanical design, and the CFD team, ensuring that promising optimized geometries and operating strategies are evaluated rigorously before they influence major engineering decisions.
  • This role is highly technical and highly cross-functional.
  • You will run and improve CFD workflows using Helyx, OpenFOAM, and/or Star-CCM+, validate optimized results against high-fidelity simulations, compare simulation outputs against experimental and sea-trial data, and communicate simulation confidence, assumptions, sensitivities, and validation status.
  • You will be expected to diagnose difficult CFD issues, improve automation pipelines, post-process and visualize complex results, and help establish the standards by which performance claims are validated.
  • The ideal candidate has deep marine CFD experience, strong first-principles engineering judgment, and the ability to own major technical projects from ambiguous problem statements through validated conclusions.
  • We are especially interested in candidates who can not only use CFD tools, but also improve them through scripting, automation, solver customization, OpenFOAM/Helyx development, or related code development.
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