Simulation Manager

The simulation domain owns York's physics simulator and the model of the spacecraft that flight software is tested against. Alongside it, the interface emulators stand in for real avionics interfaces, an API exposes fault interfaces to manipulate models, and a messenger application attaches for reading and logging simulation messages. This team builds new simulation capabilities, proves they are correct, and authors the mission scenarios that exercise them. When a regression test passes against our simulation, the flight software team needs to be able to trust that the spacecraft would behave the same way in orbit.

In this role you will own our simulation tools products, not just as codebases. That means a real roadmap and release cadence, versioned models and documented interfaces, and clear commitments to the teams that depend on your simulations. You will keep the overall vision of the simulation domain organized and aligned with the requirements of internal and external stakeholders, assuring that quality work gets done in a timely manner. You will foster the growth of all simulation products as well as the engineers on your team building and maintaining them.

Responsibilities

Manage a team of 8-12 engineers with strong leadership skills, including tasking, technical direction, career growth, and performance
Set priorities across the three simulation products, working through a designated engineering lead for each, and grow that structure as the group scales
Own the simulation product roadmaps, release cadences, and versioning strategies
Communicate status, risks, and trade-offs clearly to SIT leadership and internal stakeholders
Interact with stakeholders and customers to gather feedback and requirements for feature requests and bugfixes
Implement and improve software development, testing, and deployment practices that meet division and department standards for software
Ensure quality of product documentation, user guides, training, and model validation records
Manage and monitor releases and ensure products are stable for deployment

Required Qualifications

Bachelor's degree or greater in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Computer Science, or related field
8+ years of experience in software engineering or a related field
3+ years of experience leading or mentoring engineers, including tasking and technical direction
Demonstrated development experience in both Python and C++, including performance-sensitive code
Working knowledge of physics-based modeling, numerical methods, or control systems
Experience leading others in software development, whether as a manager, technical lead, or both
Experience designing, building, deploying and operating software applications in a production environment
Experience with software product release processes
Strong communication skills and the ability to set priorities across multiple concurrent products and stakeholders
Ability to communicate technical tradeoffs, priorities, and progress clearly to both engineers and leadership
Experience with writing test documentation, such as test plans, procedures, reports, and defect records
Capable of managing multiple tasks while delivering according to program milestones and release commitments

Desired Qualifications

Experience with both product and people management, including owning a roadmap and release cadence
Background in orbital mechanics, attitude dynamics, or GN&C
Experience emulating hardware interfaces or spacecraft bus protocols
Experience validating simulation models against test or flight data
Experience designing and versioning APIs consumed by other teams
Familiarity with spacecraft flight software and avionics architectures
Experience with real-time or discrete-event simulation frameworks
Experience with Docker and containerization
Experience with Software-in-the-Loop (SITL) and/or Hardware-in-the-Loop (HITL) test systems
Experience in end-to-end, system-level automated testing
Experience with agentic or AI-assisted software development workflows
Ability to interface with and handle flight hardware
Familiarity with the space domain and satellite operations
Networking concepts like UDP/TCP
Active Top Secret security clearance or ability to obtain