Senior Backend Developer (MTSD)

Mission Driven Research, Inc; Huntsville (AL); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Mission Driven Research (MDR) is seeking a senior backend developer to join the MTSD team in Huntsville, Alabama. You will design, build, and ship high-performance backend software for multimode defense simulations, enabling AI-native workflows while ensuring clean architecture and robust performance.

As a senior contributor, you will own the simulation engine and service layers, matching physics-level accuracy with scalable, maintainable code.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a scientific or engineering field.
• 7+ years of full-time professional experience in an engineering or software development role.
• Active Secret Security Clearance (or ability to obtain).
• Strong competence in modern backend languages and architecture fundamentals.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and ship high-performance backend software for defense simulations.
• Develop a high-performance simulation core and API services.
• Collaborate with AI-native tools while maintaining code maintainability and clear documentation.
• Ensure scalability, reliability, and performance at scale.

Skills

Python

C/C++

Rust

APIs & services

Databases

Education

Bachelor's degree in science or engineering

Tools

Docker

CI/CD pipelines

PostgreSQL

Redis

WebSockets

CUDA

Profiling & observability

Git

Job description

Mission Driven Research (MDR) is here to deliver technical excellence with a mission-driven mindset - going the extra mile for our customers, growing our people personally and professionally, and giving generously to our communities. We're looking for a skilled, AI-native senior backend developer who will join our Multimode Threat Simulation Development (MTSD) team in Huntsville, Alabama and become part of our rapidly growing defense technology company operating in missile defense, UAS/counter-UAS, and intelligence markets. You will be part of an elite software development team poised to outbuild teams several times our size through principled adoption of emerging toolsets, and backed by a culture of deep respect for our employees and shared mission.

Here’s what you’ll be doing:

You’ll design, build, and ship high-performance, innovative backend software as an integral part of a team solving two fiendishly hard, still unsolved problems:

• Build a variable-fidelity, engineering-level defense simulation for multimode countermeasure development: flexible enough to answer many kinds of questions, but highly performant at the specific tasks it's pointed at. People have been trying to build this for >40 years, and the graveyard is full of sim frameworks that ended up flexible, fast, or fit for purpose, but never all three. We think we can actually do it.
• Go AI-native without creating a bigger mess to clean up. Agentic coding tools accelerate the pace of development. But wielded indiscriminately, they end up accruing a mountain of tech debt. What's rare is a process where agentic tools turn into a sustained increase in development velocity with high quality. This requires human oversight and human skill at every point that matters, documentation that stays true, a codebase that people actually understand, and guardrails that keep one bad agent run from torpedoing weeks of work. If you've used these tools seriously, you know exactly which headaches we mean. We intend to avoid them, not suffer them.

As part of this process, you will build the simulation framework itself: the high-performance computational core and the services and APIs that engineers and analysts use to drive it, owning everything from the physics loop to the API boundary, while fullstack teammates build the interfaces on top. You'll work within an AI-native workflow that moves at agent speed, guided by your skill and understanding. You'll be responsible for the architecture and implementation of the simulation engine and its service and data layers, performance engineering worthy of engineering-level modeling, and blending AI code generation with the judgment that delivers a codebase people can actually understand and work with. This position is considered a senior position. You will need to be able to demonstrate an exceptional degree of technical ingenuity, intellectual curiosity, aptitude for building (as opposed to simply analyzing or theorizing), and clear communication. You will be a self-starter and able to demonstrate a history of seeking out, identifying, and capitalizing on learning opportunities. In short, we're looking for someone with the talent and grit overmatch to build at agent speed without drowning in agent slop.

Here’s what you’ll need:

You must have a bachelor's degree at minimum, in a scientific or engineering field. Also, we're looking for someone with 7+ years of full-time professional experience in an engineering or software development role. Finally, you must possess or have the ability to obtain an active Secret Security Clearance. Lacking any one of these disqualifies you from this job. You also must have:

• Outstanding demonstrated technical competence and ingenuity in modern backend software languages (e.g. Python, C/C++, Rust), scientific modeling, and architecture fundamentals (APIs and services, databases and data modeling, numerical methods, concurrency and parallelism, and performance at scale) [Must be able to quickly understand, apply, and adapt challenging technical concepts in your domain without a walkthrough]
• Facility with the tools of the backend trade: traditional IDEs (e.g. VS Code, JetBrains), Git and code review workflows, databases and caching (e.g. PostgreSQL, Redis), real-time data delivery (e.g. WebSockets, streaming APIs), parallel and accelerated compute (e.g. multiprocessing, SIMD/vectorization, CUDA), Docker and CI/CD pipelines, and profiling and observability tooling [AI can generate code all day long, but you're the one who has to make it fast, right, and maintainable]
• Hands‑on experience using or harnessing agentic coding tools (e.g. Cursor, Windsurf, Claude Code) in real development workflows [Must be able to work fluently in an AI‑native environment]
• Exceptional aptitude for building tangible products [Must be able to demonstrate this by a portfolio of shipped systems, open‑source contributions, or serious side projects]
• Strong intellectual curiosity [You will be asked to leave your comfort zone early and often, so we're looking for evidence that you've done this on your own before]
• Preference for self‑directed work [You'll work with our top technical talent, but we're looking for evidence that when given a problem to solve, you know how to identify and execute the means for solving it.]
• Demonstrated history of effective collaboration [You'll be working with multiple other people as part of a variety of integrated teams and must be capable of both shouldering work yourself and leading projects with little guidance. This implies other things like good communication, planning and coordination, and 'soft' skills.]

Other Qualifications We Hope You Bring To The Table

• Experience building simulations, numerical software, or other high-performance scientific computing systems [If you've made a hot loop 100x faster or wrestled a legacy solver into a clean API, we want to hear about it!]
• Experience working in a startup environment
• Familiarity with DoD modeling & simulation verification, validation, and accreditation (VV&A) processes
• A background in physics, electrical engineering, or modeling & simulation [Our sim models real-world phenomena, and domain intuition makes you a better builder of it]

Other Specifics About This Position

Contingent upon contract award? Yes, this position is contingent upon contract award.

Mission Driven Research is an Equal Opportunity Employer, including disability/veterans. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.