Senior Software Engineer, Backend

Senior Software Engineer, Control Plane & Orchestration

SimSpace serves as an AI Proving Ground where organizations can confidently train, test, and outmaneuver adversaries in any environment. Trusted by allied governments, militaries, enterprises, and research institutions worldwide, SimSpace enables adaptive, AI-ready defenses that stay ahead of evolving threats. Founded in 2015 by experts from U.S. Cyber Command and MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the platform unifies training, testing, and validation in a realistic, live-fire simulation—helping teams evaluate security investments, optimize performance, and compress cyber readiness cycles from months to days.

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to build the orchestration engine at the heart of SimSpace's internet simulation platform. Every action in the platform, standing up a simulated service, registering a persona, pushing a topology update to a range, delivering a file to a scenario, provisioning a SaaS application, flows through the control plane this engineer owns. Where the other engineering roles on the team build the simulation layers themselves, this role builds the system that ties them together: the API surface that external systems call, the event-driven backbone that coordinates actions across subsystems, and the deployment and operational model that keeps a complex, multi-tenant platform running reliably across many concurrent range deployments. If you are energized by building systems that other engineers depend on and have strong instincts for distributed systems correctness and operational rigor, this role is for you.

The team is responsible for:

• The control plane API: the external-facing interface through which range orchestration, scenario management, and user emulation systems drive the internet simulation platform, creating services, registering personas, updating topology, and querying state
• The event-driven orchestration backbone that coordinates actions across the platform's simulation layers, network, services, identity, and storage, and maintains consistent state across a distributed, multi-range deployment
• Persistent storage infrastructure for the platform: service data, content corpora, certificate stores, topology state, and the volumes that simulated services depend on
• The deployment and operational model for the internet simulation platform itself as a long-lived Kubernetes-native product, including upgrade paths, multi-range scaling, and the configuration model for new range integrations
• In-range proxy agent infrastructure in collaboration with the network simulation tech lead: the components that bridge the control plane to individual range deployments and maintain platform presence within each range

What will you be doing as a Senior Software Engineer, Backend at SimSpace?

• Design and build the control plane API: the interface that range orchestration and scenario systems use to drive the internet simulation platform, with strong attention to idempotency, consistent error semantics, and the operational patterns that make a platform API pleasant to build on
• Own the event-driven orchestration layer that coordinates multi-step operations across the platform's subsystems, ensuring that standing up a new range, registering a persona, incorporating a SaaS application, or updating topology propagates correctly and completely across all components
• Build and maintain the platform's persistent storage layer, providing reliable, well-abstracted storage primitives for the services and subsystems that depend on it, across file, object, and container storage as requirements evolve
• Own the deployment model for the internet simulation platform itself: the Kubernetes operators or controllers that manage platform lifecycle, the upgrade and rollout strategy for a service that cannot afford downtime, and the configuration model for integrating new ranges
• Define and own the state model for the platform, what is authoritative where, how components recover from partial failures, and how the platform converges to a correct state after disruption
• Collaborate with the network simulation tech lead on the in-range proxy agent architecture, owning the infrastructure side of that interface: agent deployment, connectivity management, and the handoff model when an agent loses contact with the control plane
• Partner with the SRE team on the operational model for a new platform service, establishing runbooks, incident response procedures, and the observability instrumentation that makes the platform debuggable in production
• Contribute to cross-cutting concerns including configuration management, secrets handling, and the security posture of the control plane

Who you are:

• Strong API design instincts, you have built platform APIs that other engineers depend on and understand what makes an API surface reliable, consistent, and operationally sound over time
• Solid distributed systems fundamentals: you can reason clearly about consistency, failure modes, and convergence in a system where a central control plane coordinates distributed components that may lose connectivity or fail mid-operation
• Experience building event-driven or message-driven systems, with an understanding of the tradeoffs involved in different coordination approaches, the implementation will be informed by the architecture, not the other way around
• Strong Kubernetes expertise including writing operators or controllers, managing custom resources, and reasoning about multi-tenant workload isolation
• Experience designing and operating storage systems across different storage paradigms, file, object, and block or container storage, and choosing the right abstraction for each use case
• Operational rigor: you instrument what you build, write runbooks, and think about failure modes before they become incidents
• Experience with air-gapped or on-premises Kubernetes deployments is a strong plus given SimSpace's customer and deployment model
• Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code and GitOps-based deployment workflows

Our Tech Stack:

Typescript, React, Postgres, Kotlin, Kubernetes, Spring Boot

We're proud to offer a competitive and comprehensive package designed to support your well-being, growth, and success:

• Compensation. Base monthly pay range: 1,500,000 CRC - 2,500,000 CRC reflecting our confidence in your expertise and impact, with the opportunity for annual bonuses tied to company performance and individual contributions.
• Health & Wellness. Private medical, dental, vision, and life benefits.
• Mental Health Support. Access to company-paid counseling, coaching, and resources for you and your family through Spring Health.
• Parental Leave. Paid leave plans to support you and your loved ones during life's most important moments.
• Ownership Opportunities. Equity stock options at hire, with annual performance-based grants—become an invested stakeholder in our shared success.
• Continuous Learning. Access a LinkedIn Learning membership to prioritize your personal and professional development.
• Social Connections. Monthly reimbursements for meaningful connections with teammates through our SocialSpace Community.

SimSpace is an Equal Opportunity Employer:

In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification document form upon hire.

SimSpace is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, pregnancy, genetic information, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other protected category under applicable federal, state, and local laws. We are committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all members of our staff, clients, volunteers, subcontractors, vendors, and clients.

Research shows that women and people from underrepresented groups only apply to jobs if they meet all of the qualifications. However, no one ever meets 100% of the qualifications. SimSpace encourages you to break that statistic and to apply. We look forward to your application!

We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, in accordance with applicable law. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or accommodation due to a disability, please contact View email address on click.appcast.io.

SimSpace does not accept unsolicited resumes from employment agencies.

Actual compensation for the position is based on a variety of factors, including, but not limited to affordability, skills, qualifications and experience, and may vary from the range.