Simulation Engineer

Who we are

Helsing is a defence AI company. Our mission is to protect our democracies. We aim to achieve technological leadership, so that open societies can continue to make sovereign decisions and control their ethical standards.  

As democracies, we believe we have a special responsibility to be thoughtful about the development and deployment of powerful technologies like AI. We take this responsibility seriously.  

We are an ambitious and committed team of engineers, AI specialists and customer-facing programme managers.  We are looking for mission-driven people to join our European teams – and apply their skills to solve the most complex and impactful problems. We embrace an open and transparent culture that welcomes healthy debates on the use of technology in defence, its benefits, and its ethical implications.  

The role

We can't flight-test our way to every answer, the range time, the cost, and the sheer number of edge cases we need to cover make that impossible. Simulation is how we de-risk fast, explore the trade space before we cut metal, and understand what happens in scenarios we'd never dare fly for real. But we don't trust a model that's never been checked against reality, the sim exists to earn its way onto the range, not replace it.  

As a Simulation Engineer on the Physical Products team, you'll build and maintain the modelling and simulation environments that let us understand how our platforms will actually behave, aerodynamically, structurally, and as part of a full engagement, before they're built, and help interpret what happens after they fly. You'll work closely with GNC, mechanical, and systems engineers, and you'll be expected to hold your models to the same standard we hold our hardware: are they good enough to trust a decision on, and how do you know.  

The day-to-day

Build and maintain high-fidelity simulation environments, 6-DOF vehicle dynamics, aerodynamics, structural, and/or engagement-level models, depending on where your depth sits  

Develop Monte Carlo and sensitivity analysis capability to explore performance across the real range of conditions a platform will see, not just the nominal case  

Work with GNC, mechanical, and systems engineers to define what needs modelling, at what fidelity, and why, simulation effort should always trace back to a real design or operational question  

Validate models against real test and flight data, and be honest about where a model is trustworthy and where it isn't, model credibility is a first-class deliverable, not an afterthought  

Support design trade studies across the vehicle, aerodynamic configuration, control authority, engagement geometry, structural loading, using simulation to narrow the design space quickly  

Build tooling and infrastructure that makes simulation faster and more accessible across engineering teams, this is as much a software engineering problem as a physics one  

Support flight and ground test campaigns, defining what to instrument and measure so test data can actually be used to validate or correct the models  

Communicate simulation results and their limitations clearly to engineers and decision-makers who need to act on them, not just archive them

You should apply if you

Have built and maintained simulation environments for a real physical system  aerospace, automotive, robotics, or a similarly dynamic and safety-relevant domain  

Understand the underlying physics well enough to know when a model is a reasonable simplification and when it isn't, flight dynamics, aerodynamics, structures, or controls, depending on your background  

Are strong in a relevant programming/scientific computing environment (Python, MATLAB/Simulink, C++, or equivalent), and write simulation code that other engineers can actually use and trust  

Have experience validating simulation output against real test or field data, and can reason about the gap between the two  

Are comfortable wor …