Director, Engineering - Environmental Realism

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.

Why join SimSpace? We are an organization that is focused on building our culture and mindfully enhancing our atmosphere every day which is why we have collaborated on an integral value system. Our governing philosophy of being Human Centered is deeply embedded within our value system. We apply this philosophy to every one of our internal team members, external clients, and their customers.

How Do We Work? We believe that people are at the center of everything we do. SimSpace fosters a culture of continuous learning, curiosity, and professional growth. That belief shows up in action: in-house training, internal and external learning platforms, cyber conferences, industry events, and dedicated time for skill development. Our people are empowered to shape their careers - and it shows. Year over year, SimSpace consistently outperforms industry benchmarks in internal mobility, promotions, and total rewards growth.

Who Thrives Here? We are a team of innovators, protectors, and problem-solvers. We believe diversity of thought and experience fuels better solutions, and we’re committed to building teams that reflect the communities we serve. Whether you’re remote or office-based, you’ll collaborate with talented colleagues across departments and time zones, united by the mission to create a safer digital world.

We invite you to apply today!

Shape the Engineering Organization Behind the Future of Agentic Cybersecurity

Artificial intelligence is transforming cybersecurity, and organizations need realistic environments to build, train, test, and operationalize AI-powered cyber capabilities with confidence.

At SimSpace, we've built one of the industry's leading AI Proving Grounds, enabling cybersecurity vendors, Fortune 500 enterprises, government agencies, and military organizations to evaluate the next generation of cyber technologies in realistic environments.

We're significantly expanding our investment in Environmental Realism—one of SimSpace's most strategic product areas. As Director of Engineering, you'll lead and grow the engineering organization responsible for the capabilities that make our cyber environments behave like the real world. You'll help shape both the technology and the organization as we scale one of SimSpace's most important engineering investments.

Environmental Realism spans capabilities such as attack simulation, user activity, enterprise infrastructure, cloud services, SaaS applications, environmental automation, and AI-assisted environment generation. These capabilities power experiences across multiple products and engineering teams, making this role highly collaborative and central to SimSpace's long-term strategy.

Build and Scale a High-Performing Engineering Organization

• Lead and grow a rapidly expanding engineering organization through Engineering Managers, hiring exceptional talent while building a culture of technical excellence, ownership, and continuous improvement.

• Develop Engineering Managers into organizational leaders who think beyond individual teams and optimize for company-wide outcomes.

• Build an engineering culture that values customer impact, predictable delivery, software quality, and operational excellence.

Build a Customer-First Engineering Culture

Environmental Realism provides foundational capabilities used across SimSpace.

• Foster a customer-first mindset where internal product and engineering teams are treated as customers.

• Build reusable, well-designed capabilities that are easy to adopt, well documented, and enable other teams to deliver differentiated customer experiences faster.

• Drive a culture that values platform usability, developer experience, automation, and long-term engineering leverage alongside technical sophistication.

Lead Cross-Functional Execution

Environmental Realism spans multiple engineering organizations and product areas.

• Partner closely with Product Management to translate long-term product vision into engineering strategy and execution.

• Build strong partnerships across Engineering, Product, UX, Cyber Subject Matter Experts, Customer Success, Sales, and Marketing to align priorities and deliver coordinated outcomes.

• Lead through influence, bringing together multiple teams around shared goals while balancing competing priorities, technical dependencies, and customer needs.

Drive the Technical Evolution of Environmental Realism

• Guide the engineering strategy behind capabilities including attack simulation, user activity, enterprise networking, operating systems, cloud services, SaaS applications, environmental automation, and AI-assisted environment generation.

• Partner with Staff and Principal Engineers to define architecture, engineering standards, and technical direction while balancing long-term platform investments with pragmatic delivery.

• Champion modern engineering practices including automated testing, observability, security, operational ownership, reliability, and developer productivity.

• Ensure Environmental Realism continues to evolve toward increasingly realistic enterprise behavior for both human operators and autonomous AI agents.

• Help define how realism is measured and continuously improved, ensuring simulated environments remain credible representations of real-world enterprise operations.

• You began your career as a software engineer and have retained strong technical judgment as your leadership responsibilities expanded.

• You enjoy building organizations as much as building technology.

• You understand that realistic systems emerge from the interaction of users, networks, applications, infrastructure, cloud services, and adversary behavior—not from any single feature.

• You naturally think in terms of systems, platforms, reusable capabilities, and long-term engineering leverage.

• You believe engineering organizations succeed when the teams they support are successful.

• You know how to balance architectural rigor with pragmatic execution.

• You lead through influence, technical credibility, and strong communication, including across organizations that do not report directly to you.

• You enjoy building engineering organizations during periods of rapid growth and investment.

Required

• 8+ years of significant hands-on software engineering experience followed by progressive engineering leadership responsibility.

• Experience leading Engineering Managers and multiple software engineering teams.

• Experience building complex distributed systems, infrastructure platforms, networking technologies, platform services, simulation technologies, or similarly sophisticated software products.

• Strong systems thinking with the ability to reason across software, infrastructure, networking, cloud services, APIs, automation, and distributed systems.

• Demonstrated success scaling engineering organizations while improving delivery predictability, quality, and operational maturity.

• Proven ability to influence technical direction and build alignment across organizational boundaries.

• Experience partnering closely with Product Management and senior technical leaders to translate strategy into engineering execution.

• Experience hiring, developing, and mentoring engineering leaders and building high-performing engineering cultures.

Preferred

Experience in one or more of the following areas:

• Cybersecurity platforms

• AI or agentic systems

• Cyber ranges or simulation technologies

• Enterprise networking

• Cloud infrastructure

• Platform engineering

• Digital twins

• Autonomous systems

• Government or defense technologies

• Operational Technology (OT) or Industrial Control Systems (ICS)

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

• Compensation. Base salary range: $210,000 - $290,000, reflecting our confidence in your expertise and impact, with the opportunity for annual bonuses tied to company performance and individual contributions.

• Health & Wellness. Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision benefits, plus savings plans—coverage starts on day one!

• Mental Health Support. Access to company-paid counseling, coaching, and resources for you and your family through Spring Health.

• Financial Well-Being. Plan for your future with a 401(k)-retirement savings plan featuring a company match.

• Flexible Time Off. Take the time you need with unlimited vacation and dedicated health & wellness days. SimSpace provides flexible solutions to meet the diverse work-life needs of team members.

• 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.

• Peloton Interactive Wellness Program: Full- and partial- subsidized membership plans and equipment discounts to help you reach your personalized fitness goals.

• 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.

• Extra Perks: Legal plan coverage, pet insurance, wellness reimbursements, and more to simplify life’s details.

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 careers@simspace.com.

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.