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Salary: USD 170,000 - 245,000 / annual
Cowboy Space Corp. is building orbital infrastructure to power and connect the space economy. The company operates satellites in Low Earth Orbit to collect sunlight and enable new capabilities—from powering on-orbit compute to transmitting energy via infrared lasers (space-to-earth and space-to-space) and delivering secure, high-bandwidth optical data. Founded in 2024 by Baiju Bhatt (co-founder of Robinhood) and backed by leading investors, Cowboy Space is staffed by aerospace and defense veterans moving quickly to solve complex technical challenges.
As Principal Turbo Hydrodynamicist, you will own the hydrodynamic design of rocket engine turbopumps end-to-end: driving engine and vehicle-level design trades, predicting head, flow, efficiency, and suction margin across the operating box, and following hardware from concept through build and test stand validation. Your scope includes inducers, impellers, diffusers, volutes, inlet and discharge flowpaths, internal leakage and cavity flow networks, and axial thrust balance.
Key responsibilities include owning pump primary and secondary flowpath hydrodynamic design from concept through qualification; driving hydrodynamic design for maximum efficiency and suction performance while meeting head-rise, axial thrust, and rotordynamic requirements; ensuring hardware meets performance across the full operating box (start transients, deep throttle, off-nominal inlet NPSH, repeated cycles); leading hydrodynamic analysis (meanline/throughflow, single- and multiphase CFD) and validating against powerpack and engine test data; defining and executing pump test campaigns; working directly with manufacturing to iterate quickly and resolve fabrication and assembly issues; supporting hot-fire operations, anomaly investigation, and post-test hardware inspection and design iteration cycles; and developing tools and best practices for the organization.
Required qualifications: Bachelor's degree in Aerospace, Mechanical, or related engineering; 12+ years of experience in turbomachinery hydrodynamic or aerodynamic design and analysis for flight hardware or high-performance rotating machinery; experience with pump sizing, specific speed and suction specific speed selection, blade and passage geometry definition, and material selection for pumped-fluid compatibility; experience with secondary flow and axial thrust analysis (leakage and cavity flow networks, balance piston, thrust piston, wear ring sizing, seal and bearing coolant circuits, net thrust balance); hands-on experience taking rotating hardware from design through build and test.
Preferred qualifications include experience with liquid cryogenic rocket engine turbopumps or reusable propulsion systems; strong background in cavitation and suction performance including thermodynamic suppression head and cavitation instabilities; experience with turbine aerodynamics (nozzle and blade row design); experience integrating hydro, aero, secondary flow and/or thrust balance results with rotordynamics and structural teams; familiarity with cryogenic fluids and/or high-speed, high-power-density rotors; proficiency with CFD and meanline/throughflow tools and ability to correlate to real-world test data; and experience mentoring or leading engineers.
