Lead Backend Engineer; Modeling & Simulation

Code Metal is the leader in automated software engineering you can trust. As AI writes more of the world's code, the bottleneck in software has shifted from writing code to verifying it works, and AI cannot verify its own work with certainty. Code Metal takes a fundamentally different approach: constrain AI to what it does reliably, verify every step independently of the model using formal methods, and keep engineers in the loop on the decisions that matter.

The result isn't code that probably works — it's code that is provably correct, with auditable proof. Customers including the U.S. Air Force, L3

Harris, RTX, and Toshiba use Code Metal to modernize legacy code, optimize performance on real hardware, and move prototypes to production, fast. Founded in 2023 with offices in Boston and San Francisco, Code Metal is funded by Accel, Salesforce Ventures, B Capital, Smith Point Capital, J2 Ventures, Shield Capital, Overmatch, RTX, and others.

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Our Modeling & Simulation team is building the next-generation wargaming and decision-support platform that helps the DoW make multi-billion-dollar force-design decisions before those decisions are made in the real world. The team spans simulation and physics, backend and data systems, frontend and geospatial visualization, and AI systems, working together to turn operational questions into extensible, mission- and campaign-level simulations that government users can trust.

In this role, you'll lead the backend and data engineering team that builds the Python services, APIs, and data systems powering our wargaming and decision-support platform. You'll balance people leadership with hands-on technical ownership — bringing Principal-level backend engineering judgment to the team's architecture and code, staying closely engaged in design and code review, and personally stepping in on the hardest technical problems, while growing a team of backend and data engineers.

• Lead and grow a high-performing backend and data engineering team while remaining hands-on in the codebase.
• Define the technical direction for backend services, APIs, data systems, and integrations across simulation, AI, frontend, and platform teams.
• Design, build, and operate secure, reliable Python services, APIs, workers, and integration layers.
• Translate product, research, and domain requirements into clear architectures, technical plans, and incrementally deliverable work.
• Establish strong engineering standards for API design, service boundaries, testing, observability, error handling, migrations, security, and code review.
• Build enterprise-grade software for cloud, private-cloud, customer-managed, on-premises, and disconnected environments.
• Partner with platform and data engineering leaders to ensure systems are deployable, observable, performant, and maintainable.
• Lead design reviews, RFCs, technical grooming, and pragmatic decisions across speed, correctness, reliability, and long-term maintainability.
• Debug and resolve complex issues spanning services, databases, queues, APIs, infrastructure, and third-party integrations.
• Review code, mentor engineers, and uphold a high bar for quality—including the validation of AI-assisted code in high-assurance environments.
• Collaborate with Product, Engineering, and government stakeholders to align platform capabilities with mission needs.
• Recruit, develop, and scale the backend and data engineering organization; at senior levels, help forecast headcount and technical capacity.

• Significant experience building and operating production backend systems for enterprise software.
• Strong Python programming skills and experience designing services, APIs, background workers, and…