About the RoleCode Metal is strengthening its Quality Engineering capabilities to make software quality more measurable, repeatable, and actionable. We are seeking a founding Staff Quality Engineer (SDET) for Modeling & Simulation, within the centralized Quality Engineering function.
Our Modeling & Simulation team builds wargaming and decision-support platform that helps the U.S. Department of War (DoW) evaluate mission- and campaign-level force-design decisions. The system combines backend APIs, asynchronous workers, geospatial and sensing models, authenticated multi-team play (including fog of war), external simulation integrations, and emerging AI-assisted capabilities.
The platform already has automated unit and integration coverage, but its growing combination of distributed services, stateful simulation, external integrations, probabilistic behavior, and high-consequence user workflows requires a more systematic validation architecture. This role will connect and extend that foundation into reproducible quality evidence across services, models, and end-to-end workflows.
You will design and build the platform's automated validation system, defining which behaviors require deterministic verification, statistical or model-based evaluation, or human review, and how limitations and residual risk are communicated as release evidence. This is a hands-on software engineering role: you will build foundational test infrastructure, write critical tests, and help engineers build quality into their work.
Core Responsibilities- Translate Quality Engineering strategy into a risk-based validation approach for Modeling & Simulation across unit, integration, contract, end-to-end, performance, resilience, and security-critical workflows.
- Build reliable test infrastructure, including deterministic fixtures, isolated test data, service and event-contract tests, integration harnesses, versioned reference scenarios, deterministic replay, and focused browser automation for critical user journeys.
- Improve CI feedback through effective test partitioning, parallel execution, caching, failure attribution, and flaky-test control, in partnership with shared platform owners.
- Write behavior-focused tests for high-risk planning, sensing, simulation, authorization, state-transition, and recovery workflows.
- Partner with simulation and model owners to turn intended behavior, assumptions, and known limitations into reusable reference scenarios, regression baselines, characterization or differential tests, and reproducible quality evidence.
- Define validation and release criteria for simulation and emerging AI-assisted workflows, combining deterministic assertions, contracts, reference checks, statistical or model-based evaluation, failure-recovery testing, and appropriate human oversight.
- Establish repeatable performance and reliability validation with measurable objectives and clear release evidence.
- Participate in design and code reviews, identify testability risks early, and mentor engineers in testing complex simulation, distributed-system, and AI-assisted changes without becoming an approval bottleneck.
- Turn lessons from Modeling & Simulation into reusable quality bars, reporting practices, testing standards, and validation infrastructure for the centralized Quality Engineering function.
Required Qualifications- Significant experience as an SDET, test-infrastructure engineer, quality architect, or software engineer responsible for automated validation of production systems.
- Strong production programming skills in Python.
- Deep experience building Python test infrastructure using pytest or comparable frameworks, including asynchronous testing, fixtures and factories, parallel execution, and CI integration.
- Demonstrated experience designing risk-based test strategies across multiple layers of a distributed system.
- Experience validating complex systems with partially nondeterministic behavior, such as simulation, statistical models, ML, or AI-assisted workflows, and sound judgment about deterministic checks, reference evidence, statistical evaluation, and human oversight.
- Hands-on experience testing Docker-based or comparable containerized, multi-service applications, including APIs, databases, messaging, authentication, authorization, and data isolation.
- Experience building and improving CI workflows with GitHub Actions or a comparable platform, including test isolation, failure diagnosis, and flaky-test control.
- Ability to set technical direction, write design documents, mentor engineers, and lead multi-team initiatives through influence.
Preferred Qualifications- Experience validating simulation, geospatial, event-driven, or other stateful systems, including reproducible deterministic and probabilistic behavior.
- Familiarity with testing or debugging C++ simulation or systems code.
- Experience testing TypeScript and React applications with Playwright or equivalent tools.
- Experience with performance testing, generated test data, and API or schema validation.
- Experience testing cloud-based, containerized systems using logs, metrics, traces, and retained test artifacts.
- Familiarity with constructive simulation, distributed simulation standards, or mission-analysis software.
- Hands-on experience evaluating AI-assisted or agentic systems, including tool-calling or multi-step workflows, and understanding risks such as nondeterminism, unsupported outputs, prompt or context manipulation, unsafe tool use, hidden state, and silent failure.
- Experience using AI coding assistants or agents throughout the software development lifecycle and defining quality controls for AI-assisted changes, such as scoped workflows, independently verifiable tests, human code review, CI checks, and risk-based release evidence.
- Experience in a regulated, high-assurance, or mission-critical domain.
- Eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. Secret security clearance.
Experience levelTypically 8+ years of relevant software engineering, test infrastructure, or quality engineering experience, with demonstrated Staff-level scope and impact. Equivalent depth of experience is valued over a rigid year count. You have turned quality strategy into test architecture for a product area, led that work through design docs and influence (not people management), and shipped the infrastructure and tests yourself.
Benefits- Pay depends on experience, but we strive to be at the upper end of the salary range
- Health care plan with 100% premium coverage, including medical, dental, and vision
- 401k with 5% matching
- Paid Time Off (uncapped vacation, plus sick and public holidays)
- Flexible hybrid or remote work arrangement
- Relocation assistance for qualifying employees
Wage Transparency - The salary range for this role is not a guarantee of compensation or salary, as the final offer amount may vary based on factors including, but not limited to, individual proficiency, skills, experience, and location.
