Full-Time

Thermal/Mechanical Lead

Posted on 1/25/2025

Rivos

Rivos

201-500 employees

Custom RISC-V server hardware for enterprises

No salary listed

Santa Clara, CA, USA

Hybrid

Category
Engineering Management (1)
Requirements
  • Experienced with technical and team leadership in engineering design and development teams. Industry leadership in thermal design of electronics with a track record of technical publications and patents.
  • Expert in numerical and computational methods, Computational Fluid Dynamics and Finite Element Analysis. Must be an avid user of Ansys Suite of simulation tools including IcePak and Ansys Mechanical.
  • Proficient user of one of the major Computer-Aacd/Product Life Cycle Management tools (Creo/Windchill, Solidworks, NX/Teamcenter).
  • Strategic thinker with vision and ability to think at both component and system levels.
  • Experienced in working with Contract Manufacturers, Original Equipment Manufacturers and Original Design Manufacturers.
  • Strong interest in emerging technologies, and enthusiastic about exploring, learning new techniques and applying them to product design. Team player with good communication and interpersonal skills.
  • Passionate for working in a startup environment.
  • Strong analytical, written and oral communication skills.
  • Useful to have familiarity with CPU socket design/assemblies
  • Useful to have familiarity with Open Compute Project mechanical design guidelines and design of Colo boxes and racks.
  • Useful to have familiarity with semiconductor packaging.
  • Useful to have familiarity with various fabrication processes including sheet metal, injection, molding, soft and hard tooling.
  • Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering or equivalent practical experience with emphasis on conjugate heat transfer.
  • Minimum of 15 years of experience in cooling system design and packaging of electronics for data centers with experience in liquid cooling.
Responsibilities
  • As Thermal lead, you will own or participate in the following: Architect next generation thermal (aggressive air cooling, single/two phase liquid cooling, potentially immersion) and mechanical solutions with multiple constraints in data center servers at the component, board and chassis levels. Own the specification for the Rivos Silicon and thermal components for customers.
  • Collaborate with external suppliers to source thermal components (heatsinks, fans, TIM, coldplate, novel chip coolers, etc). Understand both conventional and new solutions and make recommendations.
  • Initiate, build, update complex thermal models with attention to detail. Use simulation results to guide the Silicon team.
  • Lead a team of thermal, mechanical and hardware engineers to design and develop state-of-the-art cooling and mechanical solutions and integrate them to Rivos enclosures. As a lead, you will have management responsibility to grow this team, provide mentorship and feedback.
  • Collaborate with the other engineering teams (Packaging, Reliability, SI/PI, Power, General EE), present design updates, and exchange feedback to initiate, develop and revise thermal and mechanical design.
  • Identify needs, follow OCP guidelines/meetings and industry trends, to strategize, and execute the Rivos roadmap and portfolio in thermal, mechanical, and hardware engineering.
  • Generate and maintain thermal/mechanical BOMs for multiple projects.
  • Collaborate with Technical Program Manager on the schedules, volumes, lead times and budgets.
  • Collaborate with Contract Manufacturers, Original Equipment Manufacturers and Original Design Manufacturers to develop mockups, test samples and production parts/assemblies.
  • Build physical prototype assemblies and instrument those assemblies for testing. Carry out testing, summarize and correlate data, modify, and improve our systems.
Desired Qualifications
  • Experience with publications or patents in the field of thermal design of electronics.
  • Familiarity with CPU socket design/assemblies (if listed as useful) could be considered a desirable plus not required.
  • Familiarity with OCP mechanical design guidelines and design of Colo boxes and racks.
  • Familiarity with semiconductor packaging.
  • Familiarity with various fabrication processes including sheet metal, injection, molding, soft and hard tooling.

Rivos designs and manufactures custom high-performance server hardware based on the RISC-V open ISA for data centers and enterprise IT. Its products are purpose-built to deliver strong compute performance, energy efficiency, and security for demanding workloads, through hardware tailored to specific tasks rather than off-the-shelf designs. The company differentiates itself by leveraging the flexibility and cost advantages of RISC-V to create bespoke servers that meet enterprise needs, offering close collaboration and support to ensure seamless integration in large-scale infrastructure. Its goal is to serve cloud providers, data centers, and other large IT operators with tailored, dependable server solutions that optimize performance and total cost of ownership.

Company Size

201-500

Company Stage

Series A

Total Funding

$250M

Headquarters

Santa Clara, California

Founded

2021

Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Meta's $2B acquisition in September 2025 validates RISC-V for AI chips.
  • Rivos raised $250M in April 2024 to scale AI inference GPUs.
  • Canonical partnership enables Ubuntu on Rivos RISC-V data centers.

What critics are saying

  • Meta redirects Rivos roadmap to internal AI by 2026, halting enterprise sales.
  • Nvidia's 20-30% H100 price cuts in 2025 lock in CUDA ecosystems.
  • RISC-V fragmentation demands proprietary optimizations, blocking portability.

What makes Rivos unique

  • Rivos builds high-performance RISC-V SoCs with proprietary GPGPU accelerators.
  • Rivos delivers CUDA-compatible software stacks for seamless AI transitions.
  • Rivos taped out 3.1 GHz RISC-V processor for data center efficiency.

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Benefits

Flexible Work Hours

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

50%

1 year growth

53%

2 year growth

51%
Data Centre Dynamics Ltd
Oct 3rd, 2025
Meta acquires RISC-V chip startup Rivos – report

Terms of the deal have not been disclosed

FinancialContent
Sep 30th, 2025
Meta Acquires Rivos for AI Chips

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) has acquired chip startup Rivos to enhance its AI capabilities and reduce reliance on external suppliers. This move, announced on September 30, 2025, aims to integrate Rivos's RISC-V-based processors and GPUs, accelerating Meta's custom AI chip development. The acquisition reflects a broader trend of tech giants pursuing vertical integration in AI hardware, potentially impacting companies like Nvidia. Rivos was previously seeking funding at a $2 billion valuation.

TS2.tech
Sep 30th, 2025
Meta Acquires Rivos for $2B AI Chips

Meta is acquiring chip startup Rivos Inc. for around $2 billion to enhance its AI hardware capabilities and reduce reliance on Nvidia GPUs. Rivos, known for its RISC-V–based AI GPU, raised $250 million in April 2024. This acquisition aligns with Meta's strategy to develop in-house AI chips by 2026, aiming to cut AI compute costs. The move is part of a broader trend among tech giants to control AI chip development, challenging Nvidia's market dominance.

BISinfotech
Aug 18th, 2025
Rivos Targets $500M Funding to Rival NVIDIA GPUs

U.S.-based semiconductor startup Rivos is aiming to raise between $400 million and $500 million to develop advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) designed to compete directly with NVIDIA in the fast-growing artificial intelligence (AI) chip market.

SiliconANGLE Media
Aug 15th, 2025
AI chip startup Rivos reportedly seeking up to $500M in funding

Santa Clara, California-based Rivos is reportedly developing a chip optimized for artificial intelligence inference.

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