Staff Simulation Platform Engineer (Aerospace)

Location: Boston, United States; hybrid workplace

Company

Merlin is a publicly traded aerospace and defense company developing autonomous flight systems for commercial and defense aviation.

What you will do

• Design and implement scalable simulation infrastructure for aircraft modeling, autonomy development, and hardware-in-the-loop validation.
• Define topology and configuration standards across aircraft platforms and improve routing, interface, and runtime integration stability.
• Expand scenario-based simulation, Monte Carlo validation, sensor-input simulation, and traceable autonomy test workflows.
• Modernize the simulation toolchain through CI/CD, reproducible environments, schema-driven validation, and versioning of simulation artifacts.
• Build foundational platform components and mentor engineers working on simulation tools and routing infrastructure.
• Establish extensible architecture standards and collaborate with Autonomy, Compute Platform, Systems, and Lab Integration teams.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience building or scaling complex simulation or autonomy validation environments.
• Experience architecting large-scale simulation frameworks such as AFSIM, Unreal- or Unity-based environments, CARLA, or comparable platforms.
• Strong software architecture experience with multi-component distributed systems.
• Experience defining interface contracts, configuration schemas, or API boundaries in complex systems.
• Experience integrating simulation environments with real-time or hardware-in-the-loop systems.
• Hands-on proficiency in Python and/or C++, with experience modernizing or scaling legacy engineering toolchains.

Nice to have

• Experience developing virtual validation environments for autonomy systems in aerospace, automotive, or robotics.
• Experience designing scenario-based validation systems.
• Familiarity with SIL/HIL integration and CI/CD in engineering-heavy environments.
• Background in safety-critical systems.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time employment with top-tier employee benefits.
• Highly competitive equity grants included in the total compensation package.
• Base compensation is determined according to qualifications, skills, experience, education, and training.