Staff Physics Programmer, C++ – Modeling & Simulation

Jobtailor; Deutschland; Remote; EUR 120.000 - 170.000; Vollzeit

Zusammenfassung

Jobtailor seeks a senior engine programmer to architect and implement the core C++ runtime for a large-scale wargaming platform. You will own the engine's structure, performance, and long-term health, designing an ECS-based runtime for massive entity counts and heterogeneous simulations.

You will lead architecture reviews, mentor engineers, and remain hands-on in profiling and debugging as you drive optimization, scheduling, and deterministic replay across distributed systems.

Qualifikationen

• Extensive professional C++ development experience in performance-critical production software.
• Significant experience in commercial game or engine development, or similar real-time environments.
• Experience shipping at least one commercial game, engine, platform, or interactive real-time product.
• Foundational engine systems ownership beyond gameplay features or tooling.
• Experience building or extending a physics engine, game engine, or ECS-based runtime.
• Mastery of modern C++: lifetimes, ownership, templates, concurrency, profiling, and low-level debugging.
• Strong understanding of data-oriented design, memory layout, and cache behavior.
• Experience with an entity-component system or similar runtime architecture.
• Experience with engine loops, execution graphs, task systems, event systems, and scheduling.
• Ability to optimize for CPU/memory/latency budgets.
• Experience with profiling and debugging tools to diagnose CPU stalls and memory issues.
• Knowledge of real-time physics concepts (coordinate systems, integration, collision, spatial partitioning).
• Experience designing APIs, plugin systems, SDKs, or extension frameworks.
• Experience maintaining a large C++ codebase while delivering production capabilities.
• Active security clearance or eligibility to obtain one.
• U.S. work authorization may be required for certain assignments.
• Strongly preferred: SIMD, GPU compute, custom allocators, job systems, lock-free structures.
• Strongly preferred: experience with very large worlds or simulations with many entities.
• Strongly preferred: engine serialization, snapshotting, replay, world partitioning, streaming.
• Strongly preferred: familiarity with aerospace/robotics/defense simulations.
• Strongly preferred: support for Air Force/Space Force/DoW programs.
• Strongly preferred: models for sensors, weapons, EW, jamming, comms, logistics, or C2.
• Active clearance (Secret/Top Secret/SCI) preferred.

Aufgaben

• Architect and implement the core C++ runtime behind a large-scale, interactive wargaming platform.
• Own the structure, performance, and long-term health of a substantial engine codebase.
• Design and evolve an entity-component-system architecture for large numbers of heterogeneous simulation entities.
• Build data-oriented component storage, entity lifecycle management, system queries, execution graphs, and dependency-aware scheduling.
• Define engine interfaces for physics, AI, sensor, weapon, behavior, and environmental models.
• Create stable extension points for model developers without destabilizing the engine core.
• Design simulation loops, time stepping, event processing, system ordering, state transitions, and deterministic replay.
• Develop multithreaded and task-based execution systems.
• Optimize memory layout, allocation, cache locality, component access, serialization, and data movement.
• Profile and improve CPU utilization, memory use, latency, throughput, and simulation rate against explicit performance budgets.
• Build spatial indexing, broad-phase query, collision-candidate, visibility, and proximity-query infrastructure.
• Integrate externally developed physics and mathematical models into a consistent runtime.
• Develop checkpointing, snapshotting, state replication, save-and-restore, and reproducible replay systems.
• Establish architecture for networked and distributed simulation, including ownership, synchronization, prediction, and state transfer.
• Build tooling for entity inspection, system debugging, model-cost profiling, and simulation-state analysis.
• Identify and eliminate architectural bottlenecks as scale and complexity increase.
• Lead engine design reviews, mentor programmers, and raise standards for C++ architecture and performance engineering.
• Remain hands-on in implementation, profiling, debugging, and code review.
• Work on Code Metal's next-generation wargaming and decision-support platform used to help the Department of War make force-design decisions.

Kenntnisse

C++ development

Game engine development

Entity-Component System

Performance optimization

Multithreaded execution systems

Data-oriented design

APIs & extension frameworks

Engine loops & task systems

Profiling & debugging tools

Real-time physics concepts

Tools

Commercial profiling tools

Debugging tools

Simulation state analysis tools

Jobbeschreibung

• Architect and implement the core C++ runtime behind a large-scale, interactive wargaming platform


• Own the structure, performance, and long-term health of a substantial engine codebase


• Design and evolve an entity-component-system architecture for large numbers of heterogeneous simulation entities


• Build data-oriented component storage, entity lifecycle management, system queries, execution graphs, and dependency-aware scheduling


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


• Create stable extension points for model developers without destabilizing the engine core


• Design simulation loops, time stepping, event processing, system ordering, state transitions, and deterministic replay


• Develop multithreaded and task-based execution systems


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


• Profile and improve CPU utilization, memory use, latency, throughput, and simulation rate against explicit performance budgets


• Build spatial indexing, broad-phase query, collision-candidate, visibility, and proximity-query infrastructure


• Integrate externally developed physics and mathematical models into a consistent runtime


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


• Establish architecture for networked and distributed simulation, including ownership, synchronization, prediction, and state transfer


• Build tooling for entity inspection, system debugging, model-cost profiling, and simulation-state analysis


• Identify and eliminate architectural bottlenecks as scale and complexity increase


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


• Remain hands-on in implementation, profiling, debugging, and code review


• Work on Code Metal's next-generation wargaming and decision-support platform used to help the Department of War make force-design decisions

Requirements

• Extensive professional C++ development experience, or equivalent experience, building performance-critical production software


• Significant experience in commercial game development, game-engine development, or a similarly performance-constrained real-time environment


• Experience shipping at least one commercial game, engine, platform, or interactive real-time product


• Demonstrated ownership of foundational engine systems rather than primarily gameplay features, scripting, tools, or application-level integrations


• Experience building or substantially extending a physics engine, game engine, simulation runtime, ECS, job system, or comparable core technology


• Expert command of 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 comparable composition-based runtime architecture


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


• Demonstrated ability to optimize against hard CPU, memory, latency, and frame- or tick-time budgets


• Experience using commercial profiling and debugging tools to diagnose CPU stalls, memory issues, thread contention, allocation problems, and cache inefficiencies


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


• Experience designing APIs, plugin systems, SDKs, or extension frameworks used by other programmers


• Experience maintaining and improving a large C++ codebase while continuing to deliver production capabilities


• Experience leading major technical initiatives while remaining an active individual contributor


• Active Secret clearance or eligibility to obtain one


• 7+ years of experience for Staff level


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


• Strongly preferred: experience supporting very large worlds or simulations containing large numbers of 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 DoW 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 required for certain project assignments

Core Competencies

Demonstrates extensive expertise in C++ development, particularly in performance-critical environments, with a strong focus on engine architecture, optimization, and real-time simulation. Capable of leading technical initiatives while actively contributing to the implementation and maintenance of complex systems.

Highest-signal resume keywords

• C++ Development


• Game Engine Development


• Entity-Component System Architecture


• Performance Optimization


• Multithreaded Execution Systems

Soft Skills

• Mentoring


• Technical Leadership


• Collaboration

Certifications & Qualifications

• Active Secret Clearance

Industry Keywords

• Real-Time Simulation


• Game Development


• Performance-Critical Software


• Aerospace Simulations


• Defense Simulations

Tools & Technologies

• Commercial Profiling Tools


• Debugging Tools


• Simulation State Analysis Tools