Thermal Test Engineer, Hardware Test Engineering - Tesla

We are a fast-growing, diverse team of multi-disciplinary engineers dedicated to advancing Tesla’s mission of accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy—specifically through the validation of thermal systems for our vehicle programs. From concept to production, our team ensures the functionality, performance, and durability of critical thermal hardware across all Tesla vehicle platforms.

As a Thermal Test Engineer, you will take a leading role in designing and executing comprehensive test plans that validate the performance of thermal systems including battery conditioning, cabin climate control, powertrain cooling, and HVAC components. You’ll be responsible for shaping validation strategy, driving root cause investigations, and ensuring our systems meet stringent quality and reliability targets in real-world conditions. This role offers the opportunity to work across multiple vehicle programs—from current production to future platforms—and to collaborate closely with design, integration, reliability, manufacturing, and software teams. You’ll have the autonomy to lead test initiatives, improve methodologies, and mentor junior engineers, while influencing the design of next-generation thermal systems through data-driven insights. We’re looking for a highly motivated engineer with strong technical fundamentals, hands-on experience in vehicle or component-level testing, and a passion for problem-solving in a fast-paced, collaborative environment. If you’re excited about working at the intersection of innovation and impact, and want to help shape the future of electric vehicles, we’d love to hear from you.

• Own and drive hardware validation efforts for thermal management components and subsystems such as compressors, A/C lines, heat exchangers, hoses, coolant pumps, HVAC blowers and electronic valves. Your job is to figure out how these products could fail and to collaborate with design partners to drive changes
• Test, debug, and validate vehicle thermal hardware and firmware at the component, system, and full vehicle levels — including the debugging and validation of Tesla designed testing equipment and systems within a dedicated test infrastructure for comprehensive validation and performance
• Write and maintain test software to automate test execution, data collection and data analysis. Optimize test setups and infrastructure, driving continuous improvements and greater efficiency in validation processes
• Manage tests from setup through execution and reporting, including test planning, traceability, development, execution, inspections, root cause analysis, and data processing
• Ensure test findings are well-documented and quickly communicated to external teams, root cause test failures and work with design and software partners, failure analysis lab, reliability team and potentially suppliers to arrive at a corrective action