About Merlin:
Merlin (NASDAQ: MRLN) is a publicly traded aerospace and defense company building a non-human pilot to deliver full-stack autonomy for any aircraft from takeoff to touchdown. The Merlin Pilot autonomy system powers a growing range of aircraft and mission profiles and has been proven through hundreds of autonomous flights from Merlin's global flight test facilities, including Kerikeri, New Zealand; Quonset Point, Rhode Island; and soon, Bedford, Massachusetts. Headquartered in Boston, Merlin is expanding its organization to accelerate the development and deployment of its autonomy platform, helping customers solve some of aviation's most pressing challenges, from pilot shortages to improving flight safety. Backed by some of the world's leading investors prior to its public listing, Merlin continues to advance the certification and commercialization of autonomous flight across commercial and defense aviation.
About you:
We are seeking a Staff Simulation Platform Engineer to design and build the next-generation simulation infrastructure that supports aircraft modeling, autonomy development, and hardware-in-the-loop validation across multiple aircraft platforms.
This is a hands-on senior technical role focused on building scalable virtual environments, stabilizing integration infrastructure, and enabling scenario-based autonomy validation without linear growth in engineering effort per platform.
This position reports to the Virtual Test Environments Lead and will play a central role in evolving our simulation ecosystem into a robust, scalable internal platform.
Responsibilities:
1. Simulation Infrastructure Architecture & Implementation
Define and implement structured topology and configuration definitions across aircraft platforms
Improve stability of routing layers, hardware/software interfaces, and runtime integration components
Introduce versioning and compatibility discipline across simulation artifacts
Build validation tooling to prevent integration breakage from reaching lab benches
2. Autonomy-Focused Virtual Environment Development
Expand scenario-based simulation capabilities supporting autonomy development
Enable structured Monte Carlo and multi-scenario validation workflows
Develop infrastructure to simulate sensor inputs and autonomy behaviors in realistic operational contexts
Improve determinism and traceability of simulation runs
3. Toolchain Modernization & Automation
Implement CI/CD workflows for simulation artifacts
Improve reproducibility of simulation environments
Implement schema-driven validation mechanisms for interfaces
Build foundational platform components hands-on during early phases
4. Technical Leadership
Mentor and elevate engineers working on simulation tools and routing infrastructure
Establish extensibility and architectural standards within the simulation stack
Influence cross-functional stakeholders (Autonomy, Compute Platform, Systems, Lab Integration)
This is a senior technical contributor role with significant architectural impact but no direct people management responsibility.
Qualifications:
7+ years of experience building or scaling complex simulation or autonomy validation environments
Experience contributing to or architecting large-scale simulation frameworks (e.g., AFSIM, Unreal/Unity-based simulation environments, CARLA, custom autonomy simulation platforms, or equivalent)
Strong software architecture experience in 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++
Demonstrated ability to modernize or scale legacy engineering toolchains
Nice to Have:
Experience developing simulation or virtual validation environments for autonomy systems (automotive, aerospace, robotics)
Experience designing scenario-based validation systems
Familiarity with SIL/HIL integration
Experience implementing CI/CD in engineering-heavy environments
Background in safety-critical systems
