Helsing

Product Manager, Simulation & Synthetic Environments

Munich - Berlin Full Time

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 are looking for a Senior Product Manager to build the world-leading simulation infrastructure required to train, validate, and certify autonomous airborne systems. You will own the roadmap for a full-spectrum simulation ecosystem—ranging from high-fidelity Software/Hardware-in-the-Loop (SiL/HiL) engineering environments to large-scale tactical and operational wargaming scenarios.

You will empower our AI teams to train reinforcement learning agents at scale and enable our engineering teams to verify safety-critical behaviors before flight. You are responsible for closing the Sim-to-Real gap.

The day-to-day

  • Platform Strategy: Drive the vision and execution of a unified simulation architecture that scales from single-agent physics validation to multi-agent swarming mission simulations.

  • Infrastructure & Scale: Oversee the development of cloud-native simulation pipelines for massive-scale parallel testing and synthetic data generation.

  • Integration: Bridge the gap between digital models and physical hardware, ensuring seamless transition across SiL and HiL environments.

  • User Experience: Build tooling that serves diverse stakeholders—from ML engineers training agents to military operators conducting virtual mission planning.

  • Fidelity & Realism: Prioritize roadmap items for sensor modelling, environmental physics, and adversarial behaviors to ensure operational realism.

You should apply if you

  • Have 10+ years in product management or engineering leadership focused on simulation, game engines, or virtual testing environments.

  • Come with proven delivery of complex software infrastructure or simulation platforms (e.g., for ADAS, robotics, or gaming).

  • Have a deep understanding of simulation standards, physics engines, and rendering technologies (e.g., Unreal Engine, Unity, customized physics stacks).

Note: We operate in an industry where women, as well as other minority groups, are systematically under-represented. We encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet all the listed qualifications; ability and impact cannot be summarised in a few bullet points.

Nice to Have

  • Experience with DIS/HLA standards or distributed simulation architecture.

  • Background in DevOps/MLOps for scaling simulation workloads.

  • Hands-on software development experience (Rust, C++, Python).

  • Familiarity with verifying and certifying safety-critical systems via simulation.

Join Helsing and work with world-leading experts in their fields 

  • Helsing’s work is important. You’ll be directly contributing to the protection of democratic countries while balancing both ethical and geopolitical concerns

  • The work is unique. We operate in a domain that has highly unusual technical requirements and constraints, and where robustness, safety, and ethical considerations are vital. You will face unique Engineering and AI challenges that make a meaningful impact in the world

  • Our work frequently takes us right up to the state of the art in technical innovation, be it reinforcement learning, distributed systems, generative AI, or deployment infrastructure. The defence industry is entering the most exciting phase of the technological development curve. Advances in our field of world are not incremental: Helsing is part of, and often leading, historic leaps forward

  • In our domain, success is a matter of order-of-magnitude improvements and novel capabilities. This means we take bets, aim high, and focus on big opportunities. Despite being a relatively young company, Helsing has already been selected for multiple significant government contracts

  • We actively encourage healthy, proactive, and diverse debate internally about what we do and how we choose to do it. Teams and individual engineers are trusted (and encouraged) to practise responsible autonomy and critical thinking, and to focus on outcomes, not conformity. At Helsing you will have a say in how we (and you!) work, the opportunity to engage on what does and doesn’t work, and to take ownership of aspects of our culture that you care deeply about

What we offer

  • A focus on outcomes, not time-tracking

  • Competitive compensation and stock options

  • Relocation support

  • Social and education allowances

  • Regular company events and all-hands to bring together employees as one team across Europe

  • A hands-on onboarding program (affectionately labelled “Infraduction”), in which you will be building tooling and applications to be used across the company. This is your opportunity to learn our tech stack, explore the company, and learn how we get things done - all whilst working with other engineering teams from day one 

 

Helsing is an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability or gender identity. Please do not submit personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, data concerning your health, or data concerning your sexual orientation.

 
Helsing's Candidate Privacy and Confidentiality Regime can be found here