Senior Forward Deployed Engineer — CFD

Full-time position | San Mateo, CA (Onsite)

JOIN THE REVOLUTION IN ENGINEERING INNOVATION

Luminary helps engineering companies be more competitive by getting to market faster, creating better products, and reducing development risk. We do this through our Physics AI platform — the fastest and easiest way to build and deploy models that understand and instantly predict physical reality with precision. Our customers span industries from automotive and aerospace to defense, industrial, semiconductors, and energy — ranging from hyper-growth startups to Fortune 100 enterprises. Luminary is a Series B company headquartered in San Mateo, California.

YOUR IMPACT

As a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer in Luminary's Applications Engineering team, you are the physics-domain expert inside customer value delivery teams. You work in a matrix structure under a Lead Delivery Engineer (LDE) alongside Applied AI/ML Scientists, Data & Platform engineers, and selected product engineers. Your job is to take the hardest engineering simulation problems a customer brings and translate them into deployed Physics AI solutions — from data generation, through model development, into production engineering workflows. You operate at the boundary of cutting-edge research and real-world engineering practice, embedded shoulder-to-shoulder with customer engineers.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Lead the technical implementation of Physics AI engagements as the resident physics-domain expert within the customer value delivery team.
• Translate customer engineering problems into simulation campaigns, training datasets, and surrogate model architectures.
• Set up and run simulations that produce high-quality training data, working with customer subject-matter experts to validate physical fidelity.
• Partner with Applied AI/ML Scientists on model selection, training, and validation against ground-truth simulations.
• Work with Data & Platform engineers to integrate models into customer engineering workflows.
• Co-engineer with customer engineers — visible, collaborative, building trust through technical credibility and shipped outcomes.
• Travel to customer sites as needed to support deployment, training, and engagement reviews.
• Bring customer signal back to Product and Research, shaping Luminary's simulation and Physics AI roadmap.

WHAT YOU BRING

• Industrial CFD experience — external/internal aerodynamics, turbomachinery, HVAC, or multi-phase flow — and a passion for engaging customers and traveling onsite.
• Proficiency in Python for scripting and automation, familiarity with a primary deep learning framework (e.g. PyTorch), and API/SDK workflows.
• Hands-on experience with Physics AI or physics-informed ML models applied to engineering simulation (e.g., surrogate modeling, neural operators, or data-driven solvers).
• Hands-on experience with containerization, distributed computing environments, and version control systems.
• Tech-savvy mindset with enthusiasm for advanced computing and simulation technologies.
• Self-starter mentality with the ability to work independently and drive results.
• Exceptional communication skills, particularly when engaging with technical audiences.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• An engineering or physics background (e.g., Mechanical, Aerospace, Chemical) with demonstrated expertise in computational fluid dynamics and Physics AI.
• Experience with CFD software — such as ANSYS Fluent, OpenFOAM, Star-CCM+, or similar — and associated meshing, turbulence modeling, and post-processing workflows.
• Familiarity with physics-informed AI/ML frameworks (e.g. PhysicsNeMo), or equivalent experience developing and deploying surrogate models for fluid dynamics simulation.