Modeling Simulation Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

CHAOS Industries is redefining modern defense with a multi-product portfolio that gives the ultimate advantage-domain dominance. The company's products are powered by Coherent Distributed Networks (CDN), empowering warfighters, commercial air operators, and border protection teams to act faster, adapt rapidly, and stay ahead of evolving threats. 

CHAOS Industries was founded in 2022 and has raised a total of $1 billion in funding from leading investors, including 8VC, Accel, and Valor Equity Partners. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, and London. For more information, please visit www.chaosinc.com.

About the Team:

The Modeling & Simulation team builds the simulation capabilities used to design, integrate, test, and validate advanced aerospace and defense systems. We develop physics-based models, simulation environments, and analysis tools that help engineering teams evaluate system behavior, improve designs, and reduce risk before hardware test and fielding.

About the Role:

As a Modeling & Simulation Engineer, you will develop and maintain simulations for complex systems and subsystems across vehicle, sensor, software, and hardware domains. You will work with engineering teams to select the right model fidelity, build credible simulation environments, analyze results, and validate models against test data.

This role requires strong technical judgment, software ability, and engineering fundamentals. You will help shape simulation architecture, model interfaces, validation workflows, and the tools used to support design trades, integration, test planning, and system verification.

What You'll Do:

• Develop, integrate, and maintain models and simulations for advanced aerospace and defense systems.
• Build system- and subsystem-level simulations to support design trades, integration, test planning, verification, and performance assessment.
• Develop models of vehicles, sensors, effectors, environments, software interfaces, hardware interfaces, and other system elements at appropriate levels of fidelity.
• Support simulation environments such as software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, real-time simulation, automated regression testing, and Monte Carlo studies.
• Work with GNC, autonomy, flight software, systems engineering, sensor, RF, aerodynamics, propulsion, controls, test, and product teams to define simulation requirements and model interfaces.
• Run sensitivity, uncertainty, and performance studies to characterize system behavior and inform engineering decisions.
• Validate and correlate models against analytical references, lab data, ground test, flight test, hardware test, or other authoritative sources.
• Develop and maintain simulation software, model APIs, configuration systems, data pipelines, analysis tools, and visualization workflows.
• Integrate embedded software, autonomy software, flight software, or subsystem models into simulation environments.
• Produce clear technical documentation, analysis summaries, validation evidence, and briefings for engineering teams, program leadership, and customers.
• Help establish best practices for model development, simulation credibility, software quality, version control, reproducibility, and technical review.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science, physics, applied mathematics, or a related technical field.
• 5+ years of experience developing, integrating, or validating models and simulations for complex technical systems.
• Strong programming ability in one or more relevant languages or environments such as Python, C++, C, Rust, MATLAB, or similar.
• Strong engineering, physics, math, or computational fundamentals.
• Experience analyzing simulation outputs, test data, or engineering data sets to support technical decisions.
• Experience with modern software development practices such as Git, code review, automated testing, issue tracking, and reproducible workflows.
• Ability to work independently, make sound technical judgments, and collaborate across engineering disciplines.
• Eligibility to obtain a Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with physics-based modeling, digital twins, dynamic-system simulation, or system performance modeling.
• Experience in one or more relevant domains such as flight dynamics, GNC, controls, autonomy, radar/RF, EO/IR, communications, sensors, seekers, aerodynamics, propulsion, embedded systems, or hardware test.
• Experience with 6-DOF simulation, coordinate frames, numerical integration, vehicle dynamics, actuators, navigation sensors, or environmental models.
• Experience developing or integrating SITL, HITL, HWIL, PITL, real-time, or closed-loop simulation environments.
• Experience with Monte Carlo simulation, uncertainty quantification, design of experiments, sensitivity analysis, or large-scale simulation execution.
• Experience correlating models against lab, ground, flight, hardware, or field-test data.
• Experience with real-time, distributed, high-performance, or parallel simulation frameworks.
• Experience with MBSE, requirements traceability, model-based development, or simulation credibility practices.
• Experience supporting DoD, DARPA, AFRL, ONR, MDA, NAVAIR, DEVCOM, intelligence community, or advanced commercial technology programs.
• Active TS/SCI clearance.

Why CHAOS?

• Health Benefits: Medical, dental, and vision benefits 100% paid for by the company
• Additional benefits: 401k (+ 50% company match up to 6% of pay), FSA, HSA, life insurance, and more
• Our Perks: Free daily lunch, 'No meeting Fridays', unlimited PTO, casual dress code
• Compensation Components: Competitive base salaries, generous pre-IPO stock option grants, relocation assistance, and (coming soon!) annual bonuses
• Team Growth: 250 employees and counting across 5 global offices

The stated compensation range reflects only the targeted base compensation range and excludes additional earnings such as bonus, equity, and benefits. If your compensation requirements fall outside of the range, we still encourage you to apply. The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations. 

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