Description
We are seeking a Director, XL-AUV Support Systems to architect, stand up, and lead the support enterprise for the Dive-XL fleet. This role will own the end-to-end support construct: global sustainment engineering, in-service support operations, and the customer-facing sustainment program.
The sustainment of an autonomous undersea fleet is not the sustainment of a crewed grey-hull. There is no ship's company at sea, no decade-long PBL written against a stable baseline, and no resident maintainers. Vehicles are software-defined, telemetered, and measured in mission cycles, not steaming days. We are looking for an engineering leader who sees that clearly and can architect something better, not retrofit a legacy model.
As a Director, XL-AUV Support Systems, you will be an engineer with genuine commercial acumen. Technically credible enough to pressure-test our reliability and supportability decisions, and commercially fluent enough to shape outcomes-based agreements with the Customer. You will speak the language of the Customer but move at Anduril's pace.
Key responsibilities include:
- Defining and driving the long-term strategy and roadmap for XL-AUV sustainment, aligned with program delivery milestones.
- Architecting a support model for autonomous undersea fleets that is data-driven and articulating it to engineers, executives, and the Commonwealth.
- Owning the ILS deliverables across the product line: R&M targets, FMECA, RCM, sparing, support and test equipment, technical publications, training, and facilities.
- Driving supportability into the design through close partnership with engineering: early, often, and with data.
- Standing up and running the support depot and turnaround operation that recovers, services, and re-deploys vehicles between sorties.
- Owning vehicle health analytics, parts flow, configuration management, and end-to-end fleet readiness.
- Being the senior Anduril engineering voice to RAN and NSSG on all matters of in-service support.
- Shaping the support contract construct within the ASDEFCON environment, partnering with Contracts and Programs to negotiate outcomes-based agreements.
- Hiring, developing, and growing a multidisciplinary team of sustainment engineers, ILS specialists, depot operators, fleet analysts, and customer-facing program managers.
- Partnering across Engineering, Production, Supply Chain, Programs, Contracts, and T&E to ensure support is built in from the outset, not bolted on at the end.
Requirements include:
- A Bachelor's degree in Engineering or a related technical discipline.
- 10+ years of progressive experience in defence engineering and sustainment, with a track record of delivering capability and outcomes.
- Demonstrated experience designing or operating support systems for complex, hardware-intensive, software-enabled defence platforms.
- Working fluency with the ASDEFCON environment, with the ability to read an SOW and instinctively know where it will fail.
- Strong commercial acumen. Comfortable shaping a support agreement, modelling a sustainment business case, and explaining cost-of-ownership to an executive sponsor.
- Proven ability to speak Commonwealth and move at Anduril pace.
- Experience building or scaling a function from a small team, not just operating a mature one.
- Strong bias for action and extremely high ownership in a fast-paced environment.
- Resident in Australia.
- Australian citizen, eligible to obtain and maintain an NV2 security clearance.
Preferred qualifications include:
- Direct experience with the sustainment of unmanned or autonomous systems (subsea, surface, air, or land).
- Background as a Royal Australian Navy or allied engineering officer (MEO / WEEO / submarine engineering).
- Prior leadership of an in-service support function at a defence prime, with exposure to performance-based or outcomes-based contracting.
- Subsea oil & gas asset integrity, reliability, or remote-operations experience.
- Aviation fleet sustainment background.
- Familiarity with predictive maintenance, fleet health analytics, and digital sustainment tooling.