{"id":756982,"url":"https://alion.io/job/code-metal-staff-physics-programmer-c-modeling-simulation","title":"Staff Physics Engine Programmer, C++ (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":"B","score":75,"open_postings":6,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":50,"computed_at":"2026-10-29T05:49:05Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"staff","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":["US"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":{"min":200000,"max":250000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":250000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Amazon ECS","optional":false},{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"STK","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-11T17:19:11Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-11","last_verified_at":"2026-10-29T21:12:03Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":48,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":48},"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.\nHelp redefine how the DoW makes multi-billion-dollar force-design decisions. We're looking for a Physics Engine Programmer to bring the performance standards of commercial game development to our next-generation wargaming platform. You'll architect and build the core C++ simulation runtime that executes physics, behavior, and mission models developed by engineers and domain experts across the organization. Scope of ownership, architectural authority, and mentorship responsibility scale with level - see “Level Expectations by Track” below.\nYour work will span entity-component systems, data-oriented architecture, simulation scheduling, concurrency, deterministic execution, memory management, model integration, and engine-wide performance. The strongest candidates will come from commercial game development, game-engine development, or another performance-constrained real-time environment where frame time, memory, latency, stability, and hardware limitations are non-negotiable. You may have built a custom physics engine, owned core systems within a proprietary engine, or developed low-level physics and runtime infrastructure for a major game platform.\nDefense experience is not required. We care more about whether you have shipped real-time C++ systems, optimized them under hard performance budgets, and made foundational architectural decisions within a complex engine codebase.\nWhat You’ll Do:\nArchitect and implement the core C++ runtime behind a large-scale, interactive wargaming platform.\n\nOwn the structure, performance, and long-term health of a substantial engine codebase.\n\nDesign and evolve an entity-component-system architecture for representing large numbers of heterogeneous simulation entities.\n\nBuild data-oriented component storage, entity lifecycle management, system queries, execution graphs, and dependency-aware scheduling.\n\nDefine the engine interfaces through which physics, AI, sensor, weapon, behavior, and environmental models are registered and executed.\n\nCreate stable extension points that allow model developers to add capabilities without modifying or destabilizing the engine core.\n\nDesign simulation loops, fixed and variable time stepping, event processing, system ordering, state transitions, and deterministic replay.\n\nDevelop multithreaded and task-based execution systems that safely parallelize simulation workloads.\n\nOptimize memory layout, allocation, cache locality, component access, serialization, and data movement.\n\nProfile and improve CPU utilization, memory use, latency, throughput, and simulation rate against explicit performance budgets.\n\nBuild spatial indexing, broad-phase query, collision-candidate, visibility, and proximity-query infrastructure.\n\nIntegrate externally developed physics and mathematical models into a consistent, performant runtime.\n\nDevelop checkpointing, snapshotting, state replication, save-and-restore, and reproducible replay systems.\n\nEstablish clear architecture for networked and distributed simulation, including ownership, synchronization, prediction, and state transfer.\n\nBuild tooling that allows model developers to inspect entities, debug system execution, profile model cost, and understand simulation state.\n\nIdentify and eliminate architectural bottlenecks as simulation scale and model complexity increase.\n\nLead engine design reviews, mentor other programmers, and raise the standard for C++ architecture and performance engineering.\n\nRemain deeply hands-on in implementation, profiling, debugging, and code review.\n\nRequired Qualifications:\nExtensive professional C++ development experience, or equivalent experience, building performance-critical production software.\n\nSignificant experience in commercial game development, game-engine development, or a similarly performance-constrained real-time environment.\n\nExperience shipping at least one commercial game, engine, platform, or interactive real-time product.\n\nDemonstrated ownership of foundational engine systems rather than primarily gameplay features, scripting, tools, or application-level integrations.\n\nExperience building or substantially extending a physics engine, game engine, simulation runtime, ECS, job system, or comparable core technology.\n\nExpert command of modern C++, including object lifetimes, ownership, templates, concurrency, synchronization, profiling, and low-level debugging.\n\nStrong understanding of data-oriented design, memory layout, cache behavior, allocation strategies, and performance-sensitive data structures.\n\nExperience designing or extending an entity-component system or comparable composition-based runtime architecture.\n\nExperience with engine loops, execution graphs, task systems, event systems, dependency management, or runtime scheduling.\n\nDemonstrated ability to optimize against hard CPU, memory, latency, and frame- or tick-time budgets.\n\nExperience using commercial profiling and debugging tools to diagnose CPU stalls, memory issues, thread contention, allocation problems, and cache inefficiencies.\n\nWorking knowledge of real-time physics concepts such as coordinate systems, numerical integration, collision detection, spatial partitioning, constraints, and simulation stability.\n\nExperience designing APIs, plugin systems, SDKs, or extension frameworks used by other programmers.\n\nExperience maintaining and improving a large C++ codebase while continuing to deliver production capabilities.\n\nExperience leading major technical initiatives while remaining an active individual contributor.\n\nActive Secret clearance or eligibility to obtain one.\n\nStrongly Preferred:\nExperience with SIMD, GPU compute, custom allocators, job systems, lock-free structures, or platform-specific optimization.\n\nExperience supporting very large worlds or simulations containing large numbers of active entities.\n\nExperience with engine-level serialization, snapshotting, replay, world partitioning, or streaming.\n\nFamiliarity with aerospace, robotics, autonomy, and defense simulations (e.g., HLA, DIS, OneSAF, JSAF, NGTS, STK, AFISM)\n\nExperience supporting Air Force, Space Force, joint, or broader DoW acquisition and mission-analysis programs.\n\nExperience developing models for sensors, weapons, electronic warfare, jamming, communications, logistics, or command and control.\n\nActive U.S. security clearance (Secret, Top Secret, or SCI/SAP).\n\nStaff Level Expectations\nYears of Experience: 7+\n\nEngineering Craft & Code Quality: Defines and enforces the team's testing strategy, standards, and quality bar; ensures AI-generated output is tightly integrated into existing paradigms and robustly tested.\n\nArchitecture & Technical Knowledge: Designs cross-cutting changes across the stack; provides architectural guidance across the team; owns design docs for major multi-service or multi-surface projects.\n\nDelivery, Scoping & De-risking: Owns technical scoping and execution strategy for complex, multi-sprint initiatives; audits requirements for technical risk and hidden dependencies before development begins.\n\nTechnical Leadership & Mentorship: The primary technical gatekeeper for the team's codebase; reviews most high-impact work; leads technical grooming, design spikes, and RFCs; coordinates across pods when changes cross domain boundaries.\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":9616,"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":["Game Development","Embedded Software & RTOS","Code Intelligence","AI Development Tools"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-11T17:33:55Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":68,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":0.75,"age_days":47,"expected_fill_days":50,"reasons":["conf:2","velocity","win:late"],"computed_at":"2026-10-29T05:49:05Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":250000,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/code-metal-staff-physics-programmer-c-modeling-simulation","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/code-metal-staff-physics-programmer-c-modeling-simulation.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-30T01:17:06Z","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":1745,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-31T00:00:00Z"}},"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-staff-physics-programmer-c-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-staff-physics-programmer-c-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-staff-physics-programmer-c-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-staff-physics-programmer-c-modeling-simulation\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fcode-metal-staff-physics-programmer-c-modeling-simulation"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":756982}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"codemetal.ai","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":756982},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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