Senior Program Chief Engineer

Anduril Anduril · Defense · Irvine, CA · AFS : Air Defense Engineering : Chief Engineering

Senior Program Chief Engineer for Anduril's Air Defense team, focusing on building autonomous robots for defense applications. The role involves stakeholder engagement, technical ownership, tactical execution, strategic planning, and cross-team collaboration to deliver AI-powered defense systems.

What you'd actually do

  1. Build and maintain relationships with internal stakeholders, external clients, and industry partners to gather insights, align objectives, and secure buy-in for strategic initiatives.
  2. Drive technical outcomes through meticulous understanding of system performance, drive product development through operational learnings and data, own the technical narrative from product deliver through continuous improvements.
  3. Bring clarity to the path between engineering development and operational delivery.
  4. Translate strategic business goals and program requirements into actionable project plans, setting clear milestones, and driving initiatives from conception through to successful completion, ensuring they deliver intended outcomes and add value to the business.
  5. Execute on broad and/or ambiguous requirements from external clients.

Skills

Required

  • Chief Engineer, Technical Program Manager, Technical Product Manager, Engineering Manager, or Engineer experience
  • autonomous systems, robotics, or software development environment experience
  • client-facing technical program management and/or systems engineering experience
  • defense, national security, or aerospace domains experience
  • leading a technical team
  • working in a rapidly iterating test environment
  • technical aptitude
  • understanding technical designs, software development lifecycle, challenges and risks
  • working closely and effectively with engineering teams
  • working with internal and external stakeholders

Nice to have

  • familiarity with robotics, sensor integrations, or computer vision systems and their architecture

What the JD emphasized

  • minimum of 7+ years experience
  • proven client-facing technical program management
  • proven experience leading a technical team of peers to field hardware or software products to real operating environments

Other signals

  • AI-powered operating system
  • autonomous robots
  • computer vision
  • sensor fusion
  • autonomy