He estimates that 400,000 people make a living in the United States in one aspect or another of simulation. His company employs close to 200 people, with an average salary of $85,000.
The profession draws on expertise in a number of areas and does not fit neatly into any single category. Many types of employers in private industry, the military and other branches of government hire simulation experts.
Simulation "overlaps engineering, math and computer science, but it isn't the same as any one of those," Mr. Waite said. "The discipline is extremely ecumenical and moves gracefully from representing lots of different things in different ways, while requiring a core set of skills."
Those skills include a facility with technology but mainly an aptitude for "conceptualizing the world," he said. Developing a simulation requires enough native intelligence to view a problem abstractly, research the issues and tease out the myriad key elements. Then they must be incorporated into a model in which they are poked, prodded and tweaked to reach useful solutions.
The results must then be presented so that colleagues who use them — engineers, scientists and marketing staff, not to mention the suits upstairs who pay the bills — can follow. An ability to communicate is deemed essential.
So is a knack for working with others. Modeling tasks tend to be done in teams because "we solved most of the problems that one person can do a long time ago," said Danny Thomas, senior research scientist at AEgis. "Modeling space flight or missile defense is too complex for one person to understand."
