Engineering Lead, Air Defense U.S. Air Force Portfolio

Title: Engineering Lead, Air Defense U.S. Air Force Portfolio Location: Irvine, California, United States

ABOUT THE TEAM

Anduril's Air Defense team develops, integrates, and fields autonomous systems that find, track, and defeat threats in the sky while keeping operators in control of engagement decisions. The team brings together Roadrunner, Sentry, Anvil, Pulsar, and Wisp with existing and third-party sensors and effectors through Lattice, creating a software-enabled family of systems for the modern battlespace. As control of the air becomes more contested, these networked capabilities give warfighters the awareness and response options needed to protect forces against rapidly evolving UAS threats.

ABOUT THE JOB

The U.S. Air Force is one of Anduril's largest and fastest-growing air defense customers, and the work has moved well past demonstrations. The portfolio runs programs of record, multi-year IDIQs, and recurring sustainment at the same time, and installation defense is scaling from individual sites toward a service-wide posture. The technical scope is broadening with it, across sensors, effectors, command and control, tactical networks, and accreditation boundaries.
Four kinds of work run in parallel. Permanent installations defend flightlines and test ranges on base infrastructure under a government accreditation posture, which makes power, networking, cyber compliance, and data handling as much of the engineering as sensors and effectors. Deployable kits ship on short notice and have to work on arrival, including in environments cold enough to change how the hardware behaves. Rapidly relocatable passive detection pushes the kill chain well past the base perimeter and into the theater air picture through tactical data links. And part of the portfolio executes inside special access environments, where the engineering includes constraining what the system is permitted to disclose.
You are the engineering lead across all of it. You own the technical baseline for the delivered configurations in the portfolio: the architecture, the interfaces to Anduril and third-party sensors and effectors, the networks underneath them, the accreditation scope, and the verification approach that determines whether any of it is ready. Where individual programs carry their own systems engineers, you hold the picture that spans them and settle the technical questions that fall between owners.
The work is broad by design. A given week might be reconciling environmental requirements that conflict across a contract and a test plan, defining the interface to a partner's fielded command and control, writing the technical content behind a proposal, or standing on a flightline because a site is not performing and the answer is not in the logs. The portfolio is growing faster than its engineering bench, so the role carries real latitude over where the engineering effort goes.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Own the technical baseline. Architecture, interface set, and verification approach for the delivered configurations across the portfolio. Set the baseline for each, and update it when field evidence shows the current one is incomplete or wrong. Own the certification and accreditation scope where it applies, working with the teams responsible for those functions.
Integrate systems you do not own. Most of what these systems connect to belongs to someone else: equipment already on the base, partner command and control we integrate with rather than replace, government-furnished equipment, third-party sensors and effectors arriving through the Lattice SDK, and tactical data links into the wider air picture. Much of that scope arrives underspecified. Negotiate it directly with the partner or the program office, then give Anduril a clear account of what integrates cleanly, what needs an engineering sprint, and what is not technically ready.
Own whether it works at the site. Define the verification and environmental qualification approach, and explain why the planned coverage is sufficient. Make the call on whether a configuration is ready to ship. When a fielded site degrades, reproduce the failure on real hardware and real data, lead the recovery under time pressure, and feed what you learn back into the product so the next site does not repeat it.
Carry the engineering position with the customer and in pursuits. Be the engineer the portfolio brings in when the customer's engineers start asking the detailed questions. Translate operational requirements into executable technical scope, write the technical content and the basis of estimate behind a proposal, and say plainly when a commitment outruns what the engineering supports.
Solve the problems that recur across programs. These programs share hardware, software baselines, and people, so the same failures show up at site after site, and deployment networking is the clearest example. Define the standard the next deployment builds against instead of solving it once per site.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Engineering, science, or other technical degree, or equivalent practical experience
• 8+ years of systems or engineering experience on fielded systems
• End-to-end accountability for whether a delivered system actually worked at the site, not only for producing its design artifacts
• Has owned the architecture, interface set, and verification approach for a delivered capability or a program's technical scope
• Experience integrating third-party and government-furnished hardware and software into a system you were accountable for
• Ability to define the verification approach for a full scope and explain why the planned coverage is sufficient
• Ability to negotiate requirements, deviations, and acceptance directly with a customer's technical representatives, and to write a credible basis of estimate
• Works from real hardware and real data: reproduces field failures independently before proposing a fix, and has run recovery at a fielded site under time pressure
• Ability to set technical direction for a small number of engineers without managing them
• Willingness to travel up to 25% of the time
• Eligibility to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Secret security clearance

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Active Top Secret clearance, or current or prior special access program read-on
• Experience delivering counter-UAS, air defense, or installation defense capability to a U.S. Air Force customer
• Depth in one or more of: radar, passive RF detection, electro-optical and infrared sensors, effector integration, tactical networking, tactical data links, or command and control software
• Experience with accreditation and authorization for a fielded system, including STIG compliance, offline or disconnected operation, and government-approved data transfer
• Experience standardizing deployment networking or configuration management across multiple sites
• Experience with environmental qualification for extreme cold or other demanding operating environments
• Prior military or government service in an air defense, flight test, or special operations organization