Engineering Manager, UAS Simulation Platform

Socket.dev; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 175,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive benefits

401(k)

Equity grants

Unlimited PTO

Holiday calendar

Parental Leave

Mental health resources

Job summary

Firestorm is hiring an Engineering Manager to lead the Simulation team and build the software, infrastructure, and tools used to develop, test, train, and demonstrate Firestorm aircraft. You will own an existing simulation capability and grow it into a reusable UAS simulation platform, supporting interactive developer workflows, SIL/HIL testing, scenario orchestration, and mission demonstrations.

You will hire and mentor engineers with strong simulation, software, and UAS fundamentals while

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software, simulation, robotics, or related engineering experience.
• 3+ years leading software engineering teams
• U.S. person required due to ITAR regulations
• Hands-on experience building or integrating simulation systems for aircraft, UAS, robotics, or other complex physical systems
• Experience with Gazebo,JSBSim,AirSim,FlightGear, or similar simulation frameworks
• Strong C++ and Python or similar software engineering experience
• Experience with SIL, HIL, or other integrated simulation environments
• Experience integrating flight software, vehicle models, sensors, actuators, or hardware interfaces into simulation
• Strong build, packaging, deployment, and distribution of applications across multiple OS
• Experience building automated, reproducible simulation or test environments
• Demonstrated ability to debug complex problems across simulation, software, networking, and hardware boundaries

Responsibilities

• Lead the Simulation team—Own the team responsible for aircraft simulation infrastructure, tools, models, and integrations.
• Build the simulation platform—Develop a reusable simulation capability across aircraft, payloads, sensors, propulsion systems, and compute configurations.
• Enable software development and test—Provide interactive and headless environments used by aircraft software teams and automated SIL/HIL test systems.
• Build scenario orchestration—Develop tools for defining, configuring, executing, and replaying aircraft and mission scenarios.
• Scale simulation execution—Build infrastructure for repeatable local, CI, and distributed simulation runs.
• Integrate the aircraft stack—Connect flight software, autonomy, vehicle models, sensors, actuators, communications, and other aircraft systems into simulation.
• Support training and demonstrations—Build simulation capabilities for operator training, mission development, and customer demonstrations.
• Grow the team—Hire and develop engineers with strong simulation, software, and UAS fundamentals.

Skills

Software engineering

Simulation

Robotics

Leadership

C++

Python

SIL/HIL

Systems integration

UAS knowledge

Education

B.S./M.S. in relevant field

Tools

Gazebo

JSBSim

AirSim

FlightGear

Job description

Firestorm is hiring an Engineering Manager to lead the Simulation team and build the software, infrastructure, and tools used to develop, test, train, and demonstrate Firestorm aircraft. You will own an existing simulation capability and grow it into a reusable UAS simulation platform, supporting interactive developer workflows, SIL/HIL testing, scenario orchestration, and mission demonstrations.

You will hire and mentor engineers with strong simulation, software, and UAS fundamentals while