Senior C++ Physics Engine Architect — Real-Time Simulation

Code Metal, Inc.; Boston, San Francisco (MA, CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401k matching

Vacation and holidays

Hybrid/Remote work options

Relocation assistance

Job summary

Code Metal, Inc. is seeking a Physics Engine Programmer to join our Modeling & Simulation team building the next-generation wargaming and decision-support platform that helps DoW make multi-billion-dollar force-design decisions.

You will architect and implement the core C++ runtime, own engine systems, and help design an ECS-based, data-oriented simulation engine optimized for performance, determinism, memory footprint, and scale in a mixed civilian/defense environment.

Qualifications

• Extensive professional C++ development experience in performance-critical software.
• Experience in commercial game or engine development or similarly constrained real-time environments.
• Experience shipping at least one commercial game/engine/interactive product.
• Ownership of foundational engine systems beyond gameplay features.
• Experience building or extending a physics engine, engine runtime, ECS, or comparable core tech.
• Expert knowledge of modern C++, including concurrency, templates, and low-level debugging.
• Experience designing APIs, plugin systems, or extension frameworks.

Responsibilities

• 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 ECS architecture for large numbers of heterogeneous simulation entities.
• Build data-oriented component storage, entity lifecycle, system queries, and scheduling.
• Define engine interfaces for physics, AI, sensors, weapons, behavior, and environmental models.
• Create stable extension points for model developers to add capabilities without destabilizing the core engine.
• Design simulation loops, time stepping, event processing, and deterministic replay.
• Develop multithreaded execution systems that safely parallelize workloads.
• Profile and optimize CPU and memory usage against performance budgets.
• Build spatial indexing, collision, visibility, and proximity-query infrastructure.
• Integrate external physics/mathematical models into a consistent runtime.
• Develop checkpointing, snapshotting, and reproducible replay systems.
• Establish architecture for networked/distributed simulation including synchronization.

Skills

C++

Performance optimization

Entity‑component system

Engine architecture

Profiling & debugging

Real-time systems

Gameplay engine ownership

Tools

Profiling tools

GDB/LLDB

Job description

Code Metal, Inc. is seeking a Physics Engine Programmer to join our Modeling & Simulation team building the next-generation wargaming and decision-support platform that helps DoW make multi-billion-dollar force-design decisions.

You will architect and implement the core C++ runtime, own engine systems, and help design an ECS-based, data-oriented simulation engine optimized for performance, determinism, memory footprint, and scale in a mixed civilian/defense environment.