{"id":1813907,"url":"https://alion.io/job/code-metal-lead-backend-engineer-modeling-simulation","title":"Lead Backend Engineer (Modeling & Simulation)","company":{"id":716539,"name":"Code Metal","domain":"codemetal.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/codemetal","size_band":"501-1000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":95,"open_postings":6,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":82,"computed_at":"2026-10-10T05:45:15Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Boston, United States","Washington, United States","San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":137000,"max_usd":279000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":968},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Alembic","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"Django","optional":false},{"name":"Docker","optional":false},{"name":"GCP","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"SQL","optional":false},{"name":"SQLAlchemy","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-03T22:30:57Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-03","last_verified_at":"2026-10-11T18:51:34Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":7,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":7},"description":"About Code Metal\nCode Metal is the leader in automated software engineering you can trust. As AI writes more of the world's code, the bottleneck in software has shifted from writing code to verifying it works, and AI cannot verify its own work with certainty. Code Metal takes a fundamentally different approach: constrain AI to what it does reliably, verify every step independently of the model using formal methods, and keep engineers in the loop on the decisions that matter. The result isn't code that probably works - it's code that is provably correct, with auditable proof. Customers including the U.S. Air Force, L3Harris, RTX, and Toshiba use Code Metal to modernize legacy code, optimize performance on real hardware, and move prototypes to production, fast. Founded in 2023 with offices in Boston and San Francisco, Code Metal is funded by Accel, Salesforce Ventures, B Capital, Smith Point Capital, J2 Ventures, Shield Capital, Overmatch, RTX, and others. \nLearn more at codemetal.ai.\nAbout the Role\nOur Modeling & Simulation team is building the next-generation wargaming and decision-support platform that helps the DoW make multi-billion-dollar force-design decisions before those decisions are made in the real world. The team spans simulation and physics, backend and data systems, frontend and geospatial visualization, and AI systems, working together to turn operational questions into extensible, mission- and campaign-level simulations that government users can trust.\nIn this role, you'll lead the backend and data engineering team that builds the Python services, APIs, and data systems powering our wargaming and decision-support platform. You'll balance people leadership with hands-on technical ownership - bringing Principal-level backend engineering judgment to the team's architecture and code, staying closely engaged in design and code review, and personally stepping in on the hardest technical problems, while growing a team of backend and data engineers.\nWhat You’ll Do\nLead and grow a high-performing backend and data engineering team while remaining hands-on in the codebase.\n\nDefine the technical direction for backend services, APIs, data systems, and integrations across simulation, AI, frontend, and platform teams.\n\nDesign, build, and operate secure, reliable Python services, APIs, workers, and integration layers.\n\nTranslate product, research, and domain requirements into clear architectures, technical plans, and incrementally deliverable work.\n\nEstablish strong engineering standards for API design, service boundaries, testing, observability, error handling, migrations, security, and code review.\n\nBuild enterprise-grade software for cloud, private-cloud, customer-managed, on-premises, and disconnected environments.\n\nPartner with platform and data engineering leaders to ensure systems are deployable, observable, performant, and maintainable.\n\nLead design reviews, RFCs, technical grooming, and pragmatic decisions across speed, correctness, reliability, and long-term maintainability.\n\nDebug and resolve complex issues spanning services, databases, queues, APIs, infrastructure, and third-party integrations.\n\nReview code, mentor engineers, and uphold a high bar for quality-including the validation of AI-assisted code in high-assurance environments.\n\nCollaborate with Product, Engineering, and government stakeholders to align platform capabilities with mission needs.\n\nRecruit, develop, and scale the backend and data engineering organization; at senior levels, help forecast headcount and technical capacity.\n\nRequired Qualifications\nSignificant experience building and operating production backend systems for enterprise software.\n\nStrong Python programming skills and experience designing services, APIs, background workers, and integration layers.\n\nProven technical leadership, including architecture guidance, code review, mentoring, and delivery ownership for a small team.\n\nStrong understanding of service architecture, domain modeling, API contracts, system boundaries, and failure modes.\n\nExperience with relational databases-preferably PostgreSQL-along with strong SQL and data-modeling fundamentals.\n\nExperience with ORMs and database migration frameworks, such as SQLAlchemy, Alembic, Django ORM, or comparable tools.\n\nExperience delivering secure, reliable, observable software in production environments.\n\nFamiliarity with cloud deployment patterns in AWS, Azure, GCP, or similar platforms.\n\nExperience supporting software deployed beyond standard SaaS environments, including private cloud, on-premises, customer-managed, appliance-style, or disconnected deployments.\n\nAbility to make practical decisions around data consistency, reliability, observability, and operational support.\n\nStrong cross-functional communication skills and the ability to turn ambiguous requirements into clear plans and working software.\n\nStrongly Preferred\nExperience leading backend or data engineering teams on simulation, analytics, or decision-support platforms.\n\nFamiliarity with agentic AI frameworks, machine learning tooling, or ML pipeline integration.\n\nExperience with cloud-based distributed systems (AWS, GCP, Azure) and Docker/containerized development.\n\nExperience designing rule-driven systems, policy engines, or configuration-driven business logic.\n\nExperience managing managers, or growing engineers into technical-lead roles.\n\nActive U.S. security clearance (Secret, Top Secret, or SCI/SAP).\n\nExperience with observability practices and tooling, including structured logging, metrics, tracing, health checks, alerting, and service dashboards.\n\nExperience with authentication, authorization, RBAC, audit logging, and secure service-to-service communication.\n\nExperience designing systems that integrate with external services, legacy systems, third-party APIs, simulators, data pipelines, or customer-owned infrastructure.\n\nExperience with geospatial systems, simulation systems, planning systems, logistics systems, or other complex operational domains.\n\nExperience helping teams establish engineering practices without adding unnecessary process or slowing delivery.\n\nBenefits\nPay depends on experience, but we strive to be at the upper end of the salary range\n\nHealth care plan with 100% premium coverage, including medical, dental, and vision\n\n401k with 5% matching\n\nPaid Time Off (uncapped vacation, plus sick and public holidays)\n\nFlexible hybrid or remote work arrangement\n\nRelocation assistance for qualifying employees\n\nWage 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.\nWe are an equal opportunity employer. US Citizenship may be required for certain project assignments involving security clearance.\nPursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.","description_format":"text","description_chars":7007,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":true,"languages":[]},"benefits":["401k plan","Relocation assistance"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":true,"industries":["Embedded Software & RTOS","Code Intelligence","AI Development Tools"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-03T22:35:05Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":1,"age_days":6,"expected_fill_days":82,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-10-10T05:45:15Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/code-metal-lead-backend-engineer-modeling-simulation","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/code-metal-lead-backend-engineer-modeling-simulation.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-11T19:04:49Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":5525,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-12T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":716539},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=716539"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fcode-metal-lead-backend-engineer-modeling-simulation"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fcode-metal-lead-backend-engineer-modeling-simulation"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fcode-metal-lead-backend-engineer-modeling-simulation"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/code-metal-lead-backend-engineer-modeling-simulation\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fcode-metal-lead-backend-engineer-modeling-simulation"}]}