Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies
Hardware Thermal Simulation Engineering Intern at UIUC Research Park (January-August 2027)
Champaign, Illinois · Hybrid · Internship · Posted Oct 9, 2026
- Education
- Currently pursuing a Bachelor's, Master's, or Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, Thermal Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related field.
About the job
Build and analyze thermal simulations for vehicle electronics to inform cooling, packaging, and hardware design decisions.
What you'll do
- Build and run CFD and conduction models to evaluate cooling performance of vehicle electronic hardware.
- Analyze cooling and packaging concepts, thermal stack-ups, material choices, and reliability limits; recommend design options.
- Automate analysis and post-processing, document results, and collaborate with engineering teams.
What they ask for
- Currently pursuing a Bachelor's, Master's, or Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, Thermal Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related field.
- Coursework or project experience in heat transfer and fluid mechanics.
- Familiarity with numerical simulation softwares.
- Must be located in Champaign, IL and able to work out of the office in the Research Park.
Nice to have
- Hands-on experience with a CFD or thermal simulation tool such as Flotherm, Ansys Icepak, Star-CCM+, Fluent, or similar.
- Exposure to electronics cooling concepts or lab measurement techniques.
Pay
$35 – $40 per hour (base salary)
Tools
CFD, Flotherm, Ansys Icepak, Star-CCM+, Fluent, Claude, Gemini
AI focus
Use AI tools such as Claude/Gemini to write and debug scripts, automate analysis and post-processing, and speed up learning; verify AI-generated output against engineering fundamentals.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative