Deputy Program Manager, Air Defense - Middle East

Title: Deputy Program Manager, Air Defense - Middle East Location: Irvine, California, United States

ABOUT THE TEAM

Air Defense is a high-octane, rapidly scaling business line that develops, integrates, and fields an expanding mix of mature and novel capabilities to detect and defeat UAS threats. At a time when air superiority can no longer be taken for granted, the Air Defense team provides mission critical capabilities to protect the nation's most important assets. From detection to tracking, identification, deterrence, and defeat, our family of networked sensors, effectors, and Command & Control (C2) software enables our customers to rapidly close the kill chain against a broad range of UAS threats. Working across product, engineering, business development, logistics, and operations, the Air Defense team develops, tests, deploys, and sustains the Anduril Air Defense Family of Systems in challenging operational environments worldwide.

ABOUT THE JOB

Anduril’s Air Defense programs in the Middle East are growing quickly, and we are looking for a Deputy Program Manager to support execution of a large, strategic Air Defense program. The Deputy PM will manage the internal engine carrying out program execution—schedule and cost management, logistics execution, and program controls—in direct support of the program’s Senior PM, who owns executive-level coordination, management of external partner relationships, overall program delivery, and associated business growth.
You must be able to deeply understand mission requirements, master technical concepts, identify key dependencies and trade-offs, assess and mitigate risks, align internal and external parties on priorities and expectations, orchestrate complex operations, and communicate clearly and consistently. You must be able to build and manage processes to the required level of rigor while maintaining outcome orientation and a bias toward action. We are looking for a high-agency program manager who is excited by the prospect of driving Anduril’s Air Defense performance and business growth in this strategic region.
You will work alongside our engineering, product, operations, and other support teams across Anduril, as well as our customer community in-country to ensure successful deployment & sustainment of Anduril capabilities. This work will require an understanding of technical product capabilities as well as the ability to work cross-functionally from across time zones to bring the best of Anduril to bear for this critical customer.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Internal Program Execution

• Manage the day-to-day execution of Air Defense programs across all active workstreams including production tracking, shipping and logistics, site installation sequencing, and sustainment standup.
• Run recurring internal syncs — weekly business line coordination, contracting syncs, logistics syncs, training updates, and staffing reviews — and drive action items to closure.
• Manage the program's Jira project, maintaining the WBS, ensuring epics and tasks reflect current status, and using Jira Plan to provide schedule visibility to the broader team.

Schedule, Cost & Baseline Management

• Monitor program financials including burn rates, invoicing status, and budget alignment across CLINs, coordinating with Finance to flag variances early.
• Partner with the program’s engineering leadership to oversee configuration management processes, including asset tracking across all fielded and in-transit equipment, maintenance scheduling, sustainment rate monitoring, and uptime reporting to ensure operational readiness metrics are current and visible to program leadership.
• Track scope alignment to contractual line items and funded CLINs, flagging any potential unauthorized work or scope creep to the Senior PM.

Logistics & Deployment Coordination

• Serve as the internal coordination point between production teams, logistics, and in-country operations personnel to ensure equipment flows from factory to site without gaps.

Team & Resource Management

• Manage internal staffing coordination with the Staffing team, tracking open requisitions, onboarding timelines, and deployment readiness for in-country personnel.
• Coordinate across Mission, Technical, and Deployment Operations leads to ensure adequate coverage for installation surges, sustainment rotations, and training support windows.
• Support the standup of in-country sustainment operations including the Technical Operations team structure, spare parts, mobile capability kit tracking, and issue escalation processes.

Training Program Coordination

• Work closely with Air Defense’s training experts to assess Program of Instruction (POI) effectiveness and customer engagement; help scope and propose changes to Senior PM and Regional Training Manager.
• Track dependencies between training readiness and site installation completion, ensuring trainers arrive on schedule relative to system acceptance.

Compliance & Process Support

• Maintain program documentation including the PMP subsidiary plans, risk register, change register, and lessons learned.
• Support contract modification workflows internally — preparing cost, schedule, and technical inputs for proposals and engineering change proposals when scope changes are authorized.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 5+ years of program or project management experience in defense or aerospace, with demonstrated ability to manage complex, multi-team execution.
• Experience managing integrated master schedules, cost baselines, and earned value or similar program control disciplines.
• Strong cross-functional coordination skills — comfortable driving alignment across engineering, operations, logistics, finance, and contracts without direct authority.
• Proficiency with variety of digital tools (Jira, Confluence, Slack, MS365) and adept at AI integration to streamline project management, task tracking, and visualization.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, low-bureaucracy environment where you are expected to drive outcomes with minimal oversight.
• Willing to travel up to 50% of the year: 35% OCONUS (Middle East region); 15% CONUS travel.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience with CUAS, integrated air defense, or advanced distributed defense systems
• Prior OCONUS experience supporting operational deployments and/or program delivery particularly in the Middle East
• PMP certification or equivalent project management credential.