Staff Physics Programmer, C++ – Modeling & Simulation

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Design and implement the foundational C++ runtime for a large-scale, interactive wargaming platform.

• Take ownership of the structure, performance, and long-term sustainability of a significant engine codebase.

• Develop and enhance an entity-component-system architecture to accommodate numerous diverse simulation entities.

• Create data-oriented component storage, manage entity lifecycles, system queries, execution graphs, and dependency-aware scheduling.

• Specify engine interfaces for physics, AI, sensor, weapon, behavior, and environmental models.

• Establish stable extension points for model developers while ensuring the engine core remains intact.

• Architect simulation loops, time progression, event processing, system ordering, state transitions, and deterministic replay.

• Build multithreaded and task-based execution systems.

• Enhance memory layout, allocation, cache locality, component access, serialization, and data movement.

• Profile and optimize CPU utilization, memory usage, latency, throughput, and simulation rates against defined performance criteria.

• Construct spatial indexing, broad-phase queries, collision-candidate identification, visibility, and proximity-query frameworks.

• Integrate externally developed physics and mathematical models into a cohesive runtime.

• Develop systems for checkpointing, snapshotting, state replication, save-and-restore, and reproducible replay.

• Establish an architecture for networked and distributed simulations, including ownership, synchronization, prediction, and state transfer.

• Create tools for entity inspection, system debugging, model-cost profiling, and simulation-state analysis.

• Identify and resolve architectural bottlenecks as scale and complexity increase.

• Lead engine design reviews, mentor programmers, and elevate standards for C++ architecture and performance engineering.

• Remain actively involved in implementation, profiling, debugging, and code reviews.

• Contribute to Code Metal's next-generation wargaming and decision-support platform utilized by the Department of War for force-design decisions.

⛳️ Requirements

• Extensive professional experience in C++ development or similar experience in creating performance-critical production software.

• Significant background in commercial game development, game-engine development, or a similarly demanding real-time environment.

• Proven experience in successfully shipping at least one commercial game, engine, platform, or interactive real-time product.

• Demonstrated ownership of fundamental engine systems rather than solely gameplay features, scripting, tools, or application-level integrations.

• Experience in building or significantly extending a physics engine, game engine, simulation runtime, ECS, job system, or similar core technology.

• Expert proficiency in modern C++, including object lifetimes, ownership, templates, concurrency, synchronization, profiling, and low-level debugging.

• Strong understanding of data-oriented design, memory layout, cache behavior, allocation strategies, and performance-sensitive data structures.

• Experience designing or extending an entity-component system or similar composition-based runtime architecture.

• Familiarity with engine loops, execution graphs, task systems, event systems, dependency management, or runtime scheduling.

• Proven track record of optimizing against strict CPU, memory, latency, and frame- or tick-time budgets.

• Experience utilizing commercial profiling and debugging tools to identify CPU stalls, memory issues, thread contention, allocation challenges, and cache inefficiencies.

• Working knowledge of real-time physics principles such as coordinate systems, numerical integration, collision detection, spatial partitioning, constraints, and simulation stability.

• Experience in designing APIs, plugin systems, SDKs, or extension frameworks for use by other programmers.

• Experience maintaining and enhancing a large C++ codebase while consistently delivering production capabilities.

• Experience leading significant technical initiatives while remaining an engaged individual contributor.

• Active Secret clearance or eligibility to obtain one.

• 7+ years of experience for Staff level positions.

• Strongly preferred: experience with SIMD, GPU compute, custom allocators, job systems, lock-free structures, or platform-specific optimizations.

• Strongly preferred: experience supporting very large worlds or simulations with numerous active entities.

• Strongly preferred: experience with engine-level serialization, snapshotting, replay, world partitioning, or streaming.

• Strongly preferred: familiarity with aerospace, robotics, autonomy, and defense simulations.

• Strongly preferred: experience supporting Air Force, Space Force, joint, or broader Department of War acquisition and mission-analysis programs.

• Strongly preferred: experience developing models for sensors, weapons, electronic warfare, jamming, communications, logistics, or command and control.

• Strongly preferred: active U.S. security clearance (Secret, Top Secret, or SCI/SAP).

• U.S. work authorization and security-clearance eligibility may be necessary for specific project assignments.

🏝️ Benefits

• Health care plan with 100% premium coverage, including medical, dental, and vision.

• 401k with a 5% matching contribution.

• Paid Time Off (uncapped vacation, plus sick leave and public holidays).

• Flexible hybrid or remote work options.

• Relocation assistance for eligible employees.

• Pay is positioned at the upper end of the salary range.