Senior Engineering Manager, Modeling & Simulation

About the role

Code Metal is redefining code translation for mission-critical industries, helping defense partners move more quickly and reliably from algorithm to silicon. Our platform accelerates deployment of DSP, RF, communications, and embedded signal processing algorithms onto heterogeneous compute targets, including GPUs, FPGAs, ASICs, and edge SoCs. We also support automotive, aerospace, and semiconductor partners deploying complex algorithms onto constrained hardware with speed and rigor.

Responsibilities

• Lead and scale a Modeling & Simulation engineering organization of roughly 10 to 30 engineers across backend, data, simulation, infrastructure, and frontend/platform surfaces.
• Set the technical direction for simulation infrastructure, scenario systems, data models, evaluation pipelines, and decision-support workflows.
• Create a strong engineering culture around code quality, clear ownership, system design, testing, observability, documentation, and pragmatic execution.
• Raise the bar for architecture and implementation quality while keeping the team focused on shipping useful systems.
• Help the team make the right long-term technical investments without losing urgency or customer focus.
• Execute and deliver on ambiguous customer, product, and research needs into executable engineering plans.
• Own delivery across multiple workstreams, balancing speed, quality, technical debt, and long-term platform leverage.
• Build lightweight but effective operating rhythms for planning, reviews, prioritization, incident response, and cross-team coordination.
• Partner with product, AI, systems engineering, design, and customer-facing teams to deliver integrated capabilities.
• Identify execution risks early and create clarity around tradeoffs, sequencing, and staffing.
• Establish and enforce strong software engineering practices across reviews, testing, CI/CD, schema management, migrations, observability, and release hygiene.
• Drive better abstractions across simulation services, data pipelines, APIs, persistence layers, and user-facing workflows.
• Improve reliability, scalability, and maintainability of systems used for large-scale simulation, evaluation, and analysis.
• Ensure the team can reason carefully about domain logic, edge cases, data correctness, and how operational rules map into software.
• Build systems that are durable enough for serious users, not just demos.

Requirements

• 5+ years of software engineering experience and 3+ years of engineering management experience.
• Experience managing teams of 8+ engineers, with a path toward leading a 10 to 30 person organization.
• Strong software engineering foundation across backend systems, distributed systems, data systems, infrastructure, or full-stack product/platform development.
• Demonstrated ability to set technical direction, make architecture decisions, and guide teams through complex implementation work.
• Strong track record building engineering cultures with high standards for code quality, testing, reliability, and maintainability.
• Experience partnering across product, design, research, data, systems engineering, or customer-facing teams.
• Ability to operate in ambiguous environments and turn loosely defined goals into concrete execution plans.
• Strong communication skills with engineers, executives, customers, and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Comfort reviewing technical designs, asking good questions, identifying risks, and helping teams make better tradeoffs.

Qualifications

• Experience with Python, C++, TypeScript, or similar production languages.
• Experience with relational databases such as PostgreSQL, including schema design, constraints, query performance, and migrations.
• Strong understanding of APIs, typed contracts, service boundaries, data models, and versioned interfaces.
• Experience with data ingestion, transformation, normalization, lineage, or evaluation pipelines.
• Familiarity with distributed systems, event-driven architectures, workflow systems, or large-scale compute infrastructure.
• Experience building platforms used by other engineers, analysts, operators, researchers, or technical customers.

Skills

• Experience in simulation, autonomy, robotics, logistics, planning, geospatial systems, infrastructure, or decision-support platforms.
• Experience from companies or teams with strong engineering cultures such as Uber, Waymo, Cruise, Zoox, Aurora, Anduril, Palantir, Stripe, Databricks, Snowflake, SpaceX, Applied Intuition, NVIDIA, or similar.
• Experience building simulation or evaluation systems for autonomous vehicles, robotics, operational planning, gaming, digital twins, or large-scale system testing.
• Familiarity with PostGIS, geospatial data, event sourcing, provenance, versioned datasets, or replay systems.
• Experience with API schema design and typed contracts such as Pydantic, JSON Schema, protobuf, GraphQL, or OpenAPI.
• Experience working with government, defense, aerospace, or other high-consequence customers.
• Familiarity with SBIRs, OTAs, direct government programs, classified environments, or security-sensitive deployments is helpful but not required.

Benefits

• Pay depends on experience, but we strive to be at the upper end of the salary range.
• Health care plan with 100% premium coverage, including medical, dental, and vision.
• 401k with 5% matching.
• Paid Time Off (uncapped vacation, plus sick and public holidays).
• Flexible hybrid or remote work arrangement.
• Relocation assistance for qualifying employees.
• Wage Transparency - The salary range for this role is not a guarantee of compensation or salary, as the final offer amount may vary based on factors including, but not limited to, individual proficiency, skills, experience, and location.
• We are an equal opportunity employer.
• US Citizenship may be required for certain project assignments involving security clearance.
• Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.