Vast is developing next-generation space stations and space infrastructure using an incremental, hardware-rich, and low-cost approach. Vast is rapidly developing its multi-module Haven Station to ensure a continuous human presence in space for America and its allies, enabling advanced microgravity research and manufacturing, and unlocking a new space economy for government, corporate, and private customers. Haven Demo’s 2025 success made Vast the only operational commercial space station company to fly and operate its own spacecraft. Next, Haven-1 is expected to become the world’s first commercial space station when it launches in 2027, followed by additional Haven modules. Additionally, the company recently announced Vast Satellite, a high-power satellite product line leveraging its space station components and the heritage of Haven Demo.

Headquartered in Long Beach, California, and with more than 1,000 employees and over a billion dollars in private capital, Vast has built the facilities required to manufacture and operate America’s next space station. The company plans to develop future habitats and systems for the Moon and Mars, dedicated space stations for government partners, and other crewed systems that will unlock the expanding long-term space economy.

Vast is seeking a Senior Thermal Engineer, Lunar, reporting to the SVP, Lunar Programs, to own thermal architecture and analysis for Vast's lunar surface elements — a surface power station and a crewed habitat, airlock, and node designed to survive and operate through the full lunar diurnal cycle.

As one of the founding engineers on the Lunar team, you'll play an essential role in developing Vast's lunar ecosystem. In this role you will serve as the lead for thermal control of hardware destined for the lunar surface - defining, analyzing, and qualifying the radiators, fluid loops, heat pipes, MLI, coatings, and survival heating architecture that will keep crewed and non-crewed lunar systems alive. You will own the thermal architecture end-to-end, from first-order trades through model correlation and flight, and help establish the thermal design standards, margin policy, and environment definitions that Vast's lunar hardware will be built on.

This will be a full-time, exempt position located in our Long Beach location.

Responsibilities

Define the thermal control architecture for Vast's lunar surface elements - trading passive, heat pipe, pumped fluid loop, and thermal storage approaches against mass, power, complexity, and dust exposure
Size and place radiators for the lunar surface environment, accounting for diurnal sink temperature swings, albedo and lunar IR loading, terrain and self-view blockage, and latitude-driven constraints
Own the survival thermal case through lunar night - heater power budget, thermal mass and phase-change storage strategy, and dormancy and wake-up thermal states
Own the habitat, airlock, and node thermal control - cabin temperature and humidity control, condensing heat exchanger, coolant loop architecture, and depress/repress thermal transients
Build and maintain the detailed system thermal models, contribute reduced-order models to Vast's design, simulation, and validate against Thermal Desktop, SINDA/FLUINT, or equivalent
Own the thermal budget: min/max predicted temperatures per component against qualification limits across launch, cruise, descent, landed day, landed night, and off-nominal conditions
Select thermal coatings, MLI, heat pipes, thermal straps, isolators, heaters, and RTDs for the lunar environment, with explicit accounting for regolith dust deposition, abrasion, and UV degradation of end-of-life optical properties
Plan and execute TVAC and thermal balance test campaigns (chamber and shroud requirements, solar and IR simulation, cold-case survival demonstration, test profiles and success criteria), then correlate models to test data
Establish the thermal design standards, margin policy, and lunar environment definitions Vast's lunar hardware will be built on, and support design reviews, drawing checks, and NASA technical deliverables