The people
who tend the rooms.

About the role

Simulation Systems Operators are the floor-level stewards of Ocelus's world infrastructure. You watch runs — not graphs. You develop a feel for when a world is teaching and when it has gone flat. You maintain the ledger. You retire runs with care.

This is not a passive monitoring role. Operators at Ocelus are trained to sense the quality of a simulation's output: whether its agents are still generating novel behavior, whether the cultural density is increasing or collapsing, whether the run is worth the heat it costs. You will be wrong sometimes. You log why.

The ops floor runs continuously. You will work in 12-hour rotations with a team of 6–8. The ceiling is high; the air smells like new carpet and coolant. You will learn to love it or you won't last.

What you'll do

• Monitor active simulation runs across assigned grid sections, tracking utility scores, clarity levels, and behavioral emergence metrics
• Make retire-or-continue decisions on runs approaching the Line, logging rationale in the shared ledger
• Flag anomalies, cultural residue events, and frame-contact incidents for specialist review
• Coordinate with Orchard team on harvest candidates — patterns exhibiting cross-run replication potential
• Execute demand-response retirement windows during grid events, typically 17:45–18:15 daily
• Maintain per-run documentation: spin date, clarity history, utility trend, retire reason

Current active runs

A-12 · stable  ·  A-44 · stable  ·  A-71 · stable  ·  A-88 · retired  ·  A-103 · observation

Operators are assigned 4–6 active runs at any time.

What we're looking for

• Background in systems thinking, simulation design, game design, environmental modeling, architecture, or related field — or demonstrable equivalent experience
• Comfort with ambiguity and irreversible decisions under conditions of incomplete information
• High pattern sensitivity: the ability to notice when something has changed before the metrics confirm it
• Low tolerance for self-deception. You will see things in the runs. We need you to report what's there, not what you want to be there
• Willingness to work on-site, five days per week, in rotation

Nice to have

• Prior experience with BIM software, procedural world generation, or agent-based modeling
• Fluency reading heat maps and behavioral density visualizations
• You've built something — a game, a simulation, an installation — and watched it develop its own logic

About the role

Muse is the glassed-in row of rooms on Floor 5 where emergent culture appears inside simulations — sometimes, mysteriously, outside them too. We call it cultural residue: songs, games, half-traditions, rituals without rulebooks. These are signals the system wasn't programmed to produce.

Cultural Residue Analysts are responsible for detecting, documenting, and evaluating these events. You are not a researcher in the academic sense — you are a witness with judgment. You determine whether a cultural emergence is noise, artifact, or signal worth harvesting. You build the taxonomy. You write the notes that outlast the run.

Muse is small. There are currently four analysts. The role requires a particular temperament: you must be rigorous without being reductive. The things that matter most in this work don't fit neatly into a utility score.

What you'll do

• Monitor designated runs for emergent cultural events: spontaneous language formation, shared ritual, inter-agent creative behavior, transmission patterns
• Classify and document residue events in the Muse archive, flagging cross-run recurrences for pattern analysis
• Collaborate with Orchard to identify cultural patterns with cross-application potential outside the simulation
• Write clear, precise event reports — you are the primary record of things that have no other record
• Present findings to the broader team in biweekly residue reviews
• Contribute to the development of evaluation criteria for what constitutes a meaningful emergence versus convergence noise

What we're looking for

• Background in cultural anthropology, ethnomusicology, folklore, linguistics, theater, or related fields — or equivalent depth of attention to how meaning forms and spreads
• High tolerance for events that resist categorization — and genuine curiosity about them rather than frustration
• Exceptional written documentation skills. Precision in language is non-negotiable here
• Comfort working in a small, quiet, specialized team. Muse does not move fast. It moves carefully
• Low ego about attribution. The work you document will go into systems you won't get credit for

About the role

Muse operates at the intersection of simulation science and cultural observation. The VP of Emerging Culture Mining is responsible for the entire function: the analysts, the archive, the evaluation criteria, and the translation of residue events into actionable findings for Orchard, Lyra, and the executive team.

This is a leadership role that requires genuine intellectual authority. You will be asked to justify the value of things that don't show up cleanly in a utility score. You need to be fluent in both the language of the runs and the language of the boardroom — and you need to know when to use which one.

You will report directly to the founder. You will sit in on Model reviews. You will be the person who says: this matters, before anyone else knows why.

What you'll do

• Lead and develop a team of 4 Cultural Residue Analysts; define the function's methodology and evaluation standards
• Own the Muse archive: the institutional record of every significant cultural emergence across Ocelus's simulation history
• Partner with Orchard to identify cultural patterns with harvest potential; attend cross-departmental harvest reviews
• Present cultural emergence findings to the executive team on a monthly cadence
• Build external relationships with researchers, artists, and institutions working at the edge of what emergence means
• Define what "meaningful" means in the context of simulated culture — and hold the team to it

What we're looking for

• 10+ years of experience at the intersection of culture, technology, and systems — in academia, media, design, or adjacent fields
• Demonstrated ability to lead small, specialized, high-trust teams
• Track record of surfacing insights that others missed, then convincing institutions to act on them
• Deep familiarity with how meaning forms: cultural theory, narrative structure, anthropology, or equivalent lived practice
• The ability to hold ambiguity with patience — and eventually resolve it into something useful

About the role

Orchard is where simulated patterns become usable knowledge. Harvest Stewards are responsible for the critical evaluation and translation process: identifying which behaviors, structures, or discoveries from active runs have cross-application potential in the real world, and shepherding them through the validation pipeline.

This work requires a rare combination of skills: scientific rigor, systems intuition, and a genuine tolerance for the strangeness of what the runs produce. Some harvests are logistical — a new data organization method, a queue-flow model. Some are stranger. All of them require a steward who can hold the original finding intact while testing whether it survives contact with reality.

What you'll do

• Review harvest candidates flagged by Ops, evaluating cross-run replication count and real-world applicability
• Design and run validation studies for high-priority harvest candidates in partnership with Clover (wet lab) or external research partners
• Maintain the Orchard ledger: every harvest candidate, its status, and the reasoning behind accept/defer/archive decisions
• Brief leadership and external partners on harvest pipeline status; contribute to patent documentation for applicable findings
• Collaborate with Lyra on civic-applicable harvests; with Muse on culturally significant ones

What we're looking for

• Background in research methodology, applied science, translational medicine, or complex systems — with demonstrated ability to evaluate the generalizability of findings
• Strong epistemic hygiene: you know the difference between a pattern and a proof, and you hold that line
• Collaborative and precise written communication — you will write things that will be read by people who don't share your context
• Curiosity about what the simulations are actually producing, not just whether it meets a threshold

About the role

Lyra is Ocelus's civic infrastructure division — the team responsible for applying simulation-derived models to real urban systems: transit, pedestrian flow, energy routing, food access, public space design. Civic Flow Coordinators sit at the boundary between the runs and the city, translating what the model learned into language, proposals, and pilots that cities and municipalities can actually use.

This is not a purely technical role. You will spend significant time in the field: in city planning offices, at community meetings, walking the blocks where the model is already quietly operating. You need to understand what the simulation produced and be genuinely curious about the people it's supposed to serve.

What you'll do

• Manage a portfolio of 2–4 active city partnerships, coordinating data sharing, pilot design, and outcome reporting
• Translate Lyra model outputs into clear implementation briefs for city agencies and infrastructure operators
• Conduct field observation in pilot zones — you will walk the blocks, talk to the people, and bring back what the data misses
• Collaborate with Orchard to identify Lyra-applicable harvests; evaluate civic relevance of incoming findings
• Write public-facing summaries of pilot outcomes for city stakeholders and, occasionally, press

What we're looking for

• Background in urban planning, civil engineering, public policy, architecture, or community organizing
• Experience working with municipal governments or public infrastructure agencies — you understand how cities actually make decisions
• Strong writing for non-technical audiences; ability to make a data finding feel like a story about a neighborhood
• Comfort moving between quantitative analysis and qualitative observation in the same workday
• Bay Area knowledge a significant advantage

About the role

Ocelus's compute infrastructure runs on immersion cooling — server sleds submerged in liquid, fans off, waste heat recovered and redistributed to the building's rec showers, the district heating loop, and the rooftop greenhouse. The Thermal Systems Technician is responsible for the physical integrity of this system: the pumps, the tanks, the heat exchangers, the demand-response protocols that allow us to participate in the city's grid.

This is hands-on infrastructure work. You will be in the basement. You will smell coolant. You will also be responsible for a system that directly enables what happens on every floor above you, and you will know it.

What you'll do

• Maintain and monitor immersion cooling tanks, pump systems, and heat exchanger infrastructure across the compute floor
• Execute and log demand-response curtailment windows, coordinating with Ops on run retirement schedules
• Manage heat reuse routing: showers, district loop, greenhouse — daily confirmation that the loop is clean and accountable
• Respond to thermal anomalies and system alerts; escalate when the situation warrants
• Maintain the lobby curve display — the public-facing energy output graph. It is a promise. Keep it accurate.
• Work with external vendors on maintenance windows and system upgrades

What we're looking for

• Background in HVAC, data center operations, industrial cooling systems, or building engineering
• Comfortable working in a basement infrastructure environment — rotating schedule, some overnight coverage
• Strong documentation practice. The thermal log is a record; treat it like one
• Genuine interest in the problem of compute heat as a civic resource, not just a waste stream

About the role

The Director of Operations is responsible for the entire ops floor: the operators, the rotation schedules, the retirement protocols, and the quality of judgment that the team brings to the runs. This is a role for someone who has operated at this level — who understands simulation systems from the inside — and who can now lead the people who do.

The ops floor is the operational core of Ocelus. Everything that happens in Orchard, Lyra, and Muse depends on the quality of observation that happens here first. The Director sets that standard.

What you'll do

• Lead a team of 18–22 simulation systems operators across three rotation shifts
• Own the retirement protocol: define, refine, and hold the standard for retire-or-continue decisions
• Build and maintain the training curriculum for new operators — including the parts that can't be written down
• Partner with Orchard, Lyra, and Muse on cross-departmental coordination and harvest pipeline management
• Report to the founder on ops floor performance, anomaly trends, and personnel matters
• Make the hard calls when the floor needs a decision and there isn't time for consensus

What we're looking for

• 5+ years operating at a senior level in a simulation, systems, or infrastructure environment
• Demonstrated leadership of rotating-shift technical teams
• Deep understanding of what makes a good operator — the judgment, not just the skills
• High personal integrity. The ops floor makes irreversible decisions. You need to be someone people trust with that.