Senior Thermal Engineer

Role Description

Temperature decides how long a battery lives and how safely it operates. Kimbal is looking for a Thermal Design Engineer to own the thermal management of its utility-scale Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), from cell-level heat generation to container-level cooling, for systems designed for daily cycling in Indian operating conditions. You will work closely with the mechanical, electrical and BMS teams to deliver designs that keep cells within a tight temperature window at the lowest possible auxiliary energy use.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the thermal architecture of BESS containers and racks: liquid or air cooling, HVAC/chiller selection, airflow and coolant distribution, and humidity/condensation control.
• Build and run thermal and CFD simulations to size cooling systems and minimise cell-to-cell temperature spread.
• Define thermal requirements and control set-points with the BMS and controls engineers, including thermal-event detection and response.
• Own the thermal-system auxiliary power budget, and optimise cooling efficiency across load profiles and ambient conditions.
• Specify and qualify thermal components and suppliers and define enclosure sealing and dust/ingress protection.
• Plan and run thermal validation tests on prototypes and the factory reference system; correlate test data with simulation models.
• Support safety and compliance work related to thermal runaway propagation, including gas ventilation, explosion-mitigation and fire-protection design.
• Analyse thermal performance data from field sites and turn the learnings into design improvements.

Current Challenges

• Keeping LFP cells within a narrow temperature band in hot, dusty Indian sites while keeping auxiliary power consumption low.
• Balancing thermal performance, enclosure cost and manufacturability in a modular, containerised design.
• Adapting the thermal design across cell formats and suppliers as cell technology moves to larger capacities.
• Designing for thermal-event containment as safety standards evolve.

Job Requirements

• B.Tech / M.Tech in Mechanical, Thermal or Aerospace Engineering from a premier institute.
• 4–7 years of experience in thermal design for battery systems, EV battery packs, power electronics, data centres or HVAC equipment.
• Strong fundamentals in heat transfer, fluid mechanics and refrigeration cycles; hands-on CFD/thermal simulation (ANSYS Fluent/Icepak, STAR-CCM+, COMSOL or similar).
• Working knowledge of 3D CAD (SolidWorks, Creo, CATIA or similar).
• Experience planning and analysing thermal tests with thermocouples, data loggers and thermal imaging.
• Preferred: knowledge of battery thermal-runaway behaviour and related standards (UL 9540A, NFPA 855).
• Preferred: experience from student engineering teams (e.g. racing or electric-vehicle teams) that designed and tested real hardware.