The paper describes and discusses the design and testing of an efficient and high-sensitive calorimetric thermal sensor to measure simultaneously the magnitude and the direction of wall shear stress in aerodynamic flows. The main technical application targeted is the back flow and the flow separation detection for active flow control. The measurement principle is based on the flow-induced forced heat convection transfer on a heater element. The sensor is micro-structured with three parallel substrate-free wires presenting a high aspect ratio and supported by periodic perpendicular SiO2 micro-bridges ensuring a mechanical toughness and a thermal insulation relatively to the bulk substrate with high thermal inertia. The central wire is made of a multilayer structure (Au/TiSiO2/Ni/Pt/Ni/Pt/Ni/SiO2) and is composed of a heater element (Au/Ti) and a thermistor (Ni/Pt/Ni/Pt/Ni) enabling to measure the heater temperature. The upstream and downstream wires are thermistors enabling to operate in the calorimetric mode. This design provides a high temperature gradient and a homogeneous temperature distribution along the wires. The sensor operates in both constant current mode and constant temperature mode, with a feedback on current enabled by uncoupling heating and measure. Welded on a flexible printed circuit, the sensor was flush mounted on the wall of a turbulent boundary layer wind tunnel. The experiments, conducted in both attached and separated flow configurations, demonstrate the sensor sensitivity to the wall shear stress up to 2.4 Pa and the ability of the sensor to perform flow direction sensing for back-flow detection in a separated flow configuration.