Senior Technical Program Manager, Small Drones

Senior Technical Program Manager, Small Drones

Costa Mesa, California, United States

Anduril Industries is a defense technology company with a mission to transform U.S. and allied military capabilities with advanced technology. By bringing the expertise, technology, and business model of the 21st century's most innovative companies to the defense industry, Anduril is changing how military systems are designed, built and sold. Anduril's family of systems is powered by Lattice OS, an AI-powered operating system that turns thousands of data streams into a realtime, 3D command and control center. As the world enters an era of strategic competition, Anduril is committed to bringing cutting-edge autonomy, AI, computer vision, sensor fusion, and networking technology to the military in months, not years.

About The Team

Anduril's Tactical Recon & Strike (TRS) is a division with two missions: 1) build highly capable autonomous drones, and 2) build solid rocket motors at scale. We transform products like Ghost, Anvil, Bolt, and Altius from early concepts into fully operational capabilities by partnering closely with specialist engineering, operations, and production teams. Through our Anduril Rocket Motor Systems (RMS) team, we design and manufacture solid rocket motors using advanced materials, proprietary formulations, and high-volume production methods—delivering safe, reliable propulsion systems that support a wide range of mission requirements. TRS hires software engineers & hardware engineers, who are excited to build across a diverse and powerful portfolio—from autonomous aerial systems to high-performance solid rocket motors. Our teams contribute to highly capable autonomous robotics systems and propulsion products that operate reliably in the most demanding mission environment.

What You'll Do:

• Define the software roadmap for core TRS Products like Ghost, Anvil, Bolt, and Altius.
• Autonomously execute on broad and/or ambiguous requirements from internal engineering, the program office, and third party corporate partners to own successful delivery of outcomes on multiple programs simultaneously.
• Coordinate and execute frequent test events involving various levels of software and hardware, from full-software and hardware-in-the-loop simulations at Anduril HQ to flight test events and demonstrations at test sites.
• Demonstrate extreme ownership of all pieces of work; become a trusted partner to Anduril's engineers and product leaders.
• Partner deeply with engineering leaders to drive successful program execution and team velocity across groups of software teams and more broadly across departments. Be an effective proxy in program and organizational matters to help engineering leads scale.
• Ensure that the organization's technical roadmap is well understood and that programs and staffing are aligned with the roadmap.
• Manage, unblock, and accelerate cross-team projects spanning multiple functional teams and cross-functional initiatives. Instill an efficient project management mindset and workflow across the teams.
• Identify and resolve systemic execution issues across the team or group that require broader initiatives to resolve.
• Partner with engineering and product leads to scope, staff, and deliver capabilities to achieve company milestones.
• Identify, resolve, and escalate key cross team dependencies.
• Support leads with quarterly and ongoing staffing plans across the organization, particularly where difficult prioritization conflicts exist.
• Collaborate closely with other partner teams, such as hardware, product, and test operations as needed.
• Track and communicate the progress of the team or group's key programs. Define efficient processes for communicating group program status more broadly.
• Remove obstacles to drive clarity and progress, identify gaps in communication or schedule, manage issue escalations and provide support to teams balancing competing priorities, and drive results proactively.
• Understand technical implementation at the architectural level and propose technical alternatives when necessary; ask questions that clarify priorities.

Required Qualifications:

• Minimum of 5+ years experience as a Technical Program Manager, Technical Product Manager, Engineering Manager, or Engineer in an autonomous systems, robotics, or software development environment.
• A strong familiarity with robotics or computer vision systems and their architecture preferred.
• Solid technical aptitude and an ability to understand technical designs, software development lifecycle, challenges and risks; ability to work closely and effectively with engineering teams.
• Experience working in a rapidly iterating test environment with high levels of integration with software development teams.
• Strong experience in project management; practical familiarity with both Agile and Waterfall methodologies and ability to apply them where best suited.
• Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Secret security clearance.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in building programs for software and testing deliverables from ground up.
• Ability to work within organizations with minimal structure and with minimal direction.
• Experience in rolling out potentially disruptive organizational process changes.
• Experience with creating communication plans for various levels of stakeholders.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong technical, analytical and quantitative skills with the ability to use data and metrics to back up assumptions, recommendations and drive decisions.
• Experience with tools like JIRA and Confluence
• Professional certifications such as CISSP, OSCP, GIAC-PEN, Prosci, SAFe or PMP
• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or an Engineering discipline

US Salary Range

$166,000 - $220,000 USD

The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations. Highly competitive equity grants are included in the majority of full time offers; and are considered part of Anduril's total compensation package. Additionally, Anduril offers top-tier benefits for full-time employees, including:

Benefits

At Anduril, we invest in our people. Our comprehensive, competitive benefits package (available at little to no cost to employees) ensures you're supported in health, recovery, and whatever comes next. For more information, Explore Our Benefits.

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