# Software Engineer — Distributed Simulation Systems

**Company:** [Astera](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/astera)
**Location:** Emeryville, CA
**Role:** Backend Engineering
**Salary:** $100k – $400k/yr
**Skills:** C++, Distributed Systems, Networking, Mujoco, Linux, Concurrency, Multithreading, Python, PyTorch, CUDA
**Posted:** 2026-05-13

> Builds core infrastructure for large-scale distributed simulation systems, including biological and 3D physics environments. Requires strong C++ systems programming, distributed computing, high-performance networking, and experience with MuJoCo or similar simulators.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Design and implement distributed simulation systems
- Build networking infrastructure for synchronized multi-node simulation
- Build and optimize MuJoCo-based 3D physics environments
- Develop infrastructure for large-scale biological system simulations
- Engineer communication systems for distributed simulators and agents
- Optimize simulation throughput across CPUs, GPUs, and clusters
- Develop distributed execution systems
- Profile and eliminate bottlenecks in networking, scheduling, memory, and synchronization
- Work on infrastructure spanning simulation, networking, orchestration, visualization, and tooling

## Qualifications and Experience
- Strong C++ systems programming experience
- Experience with distributed systems
- Experience with networking protocols and distributed communication
- Experience with MuJoCo or other 3D physics simulators
- Understanding of concurrency, multithreading, synchronization, and performance optimization
- Experience building performance-critical systems on Linux
- Familiarity with cluster or distributed compute environments

## Strong Plus
- Experience with Python and PyTorch
- Biological or neuroscience simulation experience
- Simulation engine development
- High-performance networking experience
- CUDA or GPU systems programming
- ECS / data-oriented engine architectures
- RDMA, shared memory, zero-copy networking, or custom transport layers
- Experience scaling simulations across many machines
- Experience with UI frameworks such as wxWidgets
- Experience building visualization or simulation tooling interfaces

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**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/264a887f-442a-4458-be4b-b43e89608c40