Staff Software Engineer, Simulation
San Francisco · SF-Battery · USD 174,500-236,000 · 3+ years experience · Remote · Posted Oct 2, 2026
At a glance
- Experience
- 3+ years experience
- Workplace
- Remote
- Location
- San Francisco · SF-Battery
- Salary
- USD 174,500-236,000 · Base salary
About the role
- The Staff Software Engineer will shape the technical future of Second Life’s server and simulation systems. This role involves tackling complex, ambiguous challenges, leading cross-cutting technical initiatives, and ensuring the scalability, reliability, and maintainability of the platform.
Responsibilities
- Lead technical discovery, design, implementation, and difficult debugging for ambiguous, high-impact changes across large C++ codebases.
- Take ownership of complex technical problems from initial definition through production.
- Develop a deep understanding of Second Life’s existing systems, engineering practices, and operational context.
- Lead the technical design of initiatives that span multiple systems, codebases, and teams.
- Guide architectural decisions that improve reliability, performance, scalability, and maintainability.
- Proactively identify systemic issues, architectural gaps, and technical risks.
- Partner with engineering, product, and other stakeholders to make technical tradeoffs clear and surface risks.
- Raise the technical capabilities of the team through mentorship, design guidance, and technical feedback.
Requirements
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
- 3+ years building or maintaining real-time simulation, game-server, distributed, or similarly complex production systems.
- 3+ years of production experience with a large, complex C++ codebase.
- Strong knowledge of memory management, threading, synchronization, and concurrent systems.
- Experience designing, evolving, and operating reliable services across multiple codebases and technical domains.
- Experience with cloud infrastructure, containerized services, asynchronous network programming, and Python or shell scripting.
- Proven ability to diagnose and resolve difficult production issues like crashes, memory corruption, and race conditions.
- Demonstrated Staff-level technical leadership in navigating ambiguous problems and influencing technical direction.
Preferred qualifications
- Experience with interpreters, virtual machines, embedded scripting engines, bytecode runtimes, sandboxed execution, APIs, or long-term serialization formats.
- Familiarity with virtual worlds, MMO or game-server architecture, Second Life, LSL, or Lua.
Benefits
- Salary range $174,500 - $236,000
- Equity Incentive Plan (EIP)
- Medical insurance
- Dental insurance
- Vision insurance
- 401(k) plan
Workplace
- Onsite in San Francisco office Monday through Thursday.
- Flexibility to work remotely or from the office on Fridays.
Skills
- C++
- Python
- Shell Scripting
- Cloud Infrastructure
- Asynchronous Network Programming
- LSL
- Lua
