Senior Program Chief Engineer

Anduril Industries is a defense technology company with a mission to transform U.S. and allied military capabilities with advanced technology.

We are seeking a Senior Program Chief Engineer to join our Air Defense team in Irvine, CA. This role involves working on autonomous robots that find and neutralize other robots in the sky. The ideal candidate will have experience in a rapidly growing company, working in partnership with engineers and leadership, and thriving in a fast-paced environment with many competing priorities.

Responsibilities

• Stakeholder Engagement: Build and maintain relationships with internal stakeholders, external clients, and industry partners to gather insights, align objectives, and secure buy-in for strategic initiatives.
• Technical Ownership: Drive technical outcomes through meticulous understanding of system performance, drive product development through operational learnings and data, own the technical narrative from product delivery through continuous improvements.
• Tactical Execution: Bring clarity to the path between engineering development and operational delivery, whether through sprint planning and execution or on-the-ground support of test events.
• Strategic Planning: Translate strategic business goals and program requirements into actionable project plans, setting clear milestones, and driving initiatives from conception through to successful completion.
• Execute Autonomously: Execute on broad and/or ambiguous requirements from external clients, seizing the opportunity to shape requirements in favor of the optimal product for the client and the company.
• Enable Cross Team Collaboration: Manage, unblock, and accelerate cross-team projects spanning multiple teams and initiatives.
• Shape Growth Opportunities: Support the drafting of technical proposals, ensuring that potential projects and scaling opportunities with each account are accurately scoped, resourced, and aligned with the organization's capabilities and strategic goals.

Requirements

• Minimum of 7+ years experience as a Chief Engineer, Technical Program Manager, Technical Product Manager, Engineering Manager, or Engineer in an autonomous systems, robotics, or software development environment.
• Proven client-facing technical program management and/or systems engineering experience, preferably in the defense, national security, or aerospace domains.
• A strong familiarity with robotics, sensor integrations, or computer vision systems and their architecture preferred.
• Proven experience leading a technical team of peers to field hardware or software products to real operating environments.
• Experience working in a rapidly iterating test environment with high levels of integration with software development teams.
• Solid technical aptitude and an ability to understand technical designs, software development lifecycle, challenges and risks.
• Ability to work with internal and external stakeholders, across a wide range of technical comfort.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Must be able to obtain a minimum Secret Clearance.
• Must be able to travel up to 25% of the time.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in building programs for software and testing deliverables from ground up.
• Strong technical, analytical and quantitative skills with the ability to use data and metrics to back up assumptions, recommendations and drive decisions.
• Ability to work within organizations with minimal structure and with minimal direction.
• Experience in rolling out potentially disruptive organizational process changes.
• Experience with tools like JIRA and Confluence.
• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or an Engineering discipline.

Benefits

• Competitive salary: $166,000-$220,000 USD
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans
• Income protection: life and disability insurance
• Generous time off: highly competitive PTO plans with a holiday hiatus in December
• Family planning and parenting support
• Mental health resources
• Professional development: annual reimbursement for professional development
• Commuter benefits: company-funded commuter benefits based on your region
• Retirement savings plan: Traditional 401(k), Roth, and after-tax options