Special Projects Senior Manager, Air Defense

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. As our business line continues to scale, our newest emerging initiatives require focused direction and ownership to rapidly mature in support of Air Defense’s operational, technical, and financial objectives. These special projects are critical to our organization’s continued growth: they can convert into a new product, a new team, or a new program.

As a Special Projects leader within Air Defense’s Mission Operations organization, you will be an innovative and independent problem-solver at the forefront of some of our most critical initiatives. You will be rapidly inserted into fresh, dynamic, and at times chaotic situations on a weekly basis. You will wear many hats.
You will be the face of Anduril to many of our end-users and our customers, capable of articulating the capabilities and limitations of Anduril’s products at both an executive’s and a layman’s level. You will communicate the “why” for emerging Air Defense technology at the intersection of programmatic, financial, technical, and operational considerations.
By the same token, you will often be the face of the Air Defense business line to internal stakeholders and partners across the Anduril organization, including both functional teams such as legal and finance as well as other business lines. You will apply superb judgment and interpersonal skills to navigate tradeoffs and find solutions that advance Anduril’s interests across multiple dimensions.
We move fast at Anduril and give tremendous freedom and autonomy to our new hires to assume responsibility and exercise prudent interdisciplinary judgement. You should expect to be running at least two cross-functional projects independently within 60 days of hiring. When you join our team, you’re signing up to immediately make an impact in our organization and with our customers globally.

• Capability Development - You will lead cross-functional teams across the Air Defense business line and wider Anduril organization. You’ll work across the product, engineering, operations, logistics, and test teams to build early-stage products, drive development and maturation initiatives, and ensure our products are ready to be deployed operationally.
• Program Management - You will partner with capture, growth, and engineering leads to shepherd emerging proposals into successful programs for the business line’s most strategic priorities. You will forecast resources, liaise with subject matter experts on engineering capacity, and exercise both strategic and tactical decision-making to ensure that our newest programs are set up for success across the dimensions of cost, schedule, and performance.
• Support Global Growth Initiatives - You will be a trusted product consultant for the Air Defense Business Line’s international growth opportunities and for strategic international engagements. You will communicate the nuances of engineering and production roadmaps for Air Defense products, consult on product-market fit for international growth-leads, and participate as the business-line representative in high-visibility engagements with senior domestic & foreign government officials.
• Agile Flex Capacity - As Anduril rapidly scales we are are often presented with unexpected opportunities that require a nimble and autonomous leader to own end-to-end. You will be a full-field player for the business line and will demonstrate extreme professional versatility as an elite generalist, filling in where the need is greatest.

This role is not for everyone. You will live on a constant rollercoaster of “it’s so over / we’re so back,” and you need to be the force that steadies the ship in large swells. We are far more interested in what you have done than where you are coming from, and have distilled some of the attributes that we are looking for below:

• First-Principles Thinker: You break down complex problems into their most fundamental components and build solutions from what is known to be true and makes sense in the current context, rather than how it has been done in the past. You always question the status quo.
• Builds with Longevity in Mind - You build teams and systems that are resilient and scalable beyond your personal involvement. You’re unafraid to leave something you’ve built, even when it’s quickly succeeding.
• Conquers Ambiguity - You use questions as tools and have a proven track-record of making sound decisions under uncertainty and with limited information.
• Master Communicator - You are fluent in the fundamental principles of persuasion and have elite writing, speaking, and narrative-crafting skills.
• Analytical Rigor and Versatility - You’re a dialectical thinker able to properly interpret contradictory information. You have an extensive analytical toolkit and have the intellectual awareness to update your views as you receive new information.
• Demonstrated Humility - You’re not above shouldering more than your share of the task, getting your hands dirty, and you champion the successes of the teams you lead. No job is too small for you.
  
• Bachelor’s Degree with 6+ years work experience in problem solving functions
• A history of delivering technology (hardware and/or software) to large commercial institutions or government organizations
• Proven experience leading tech-enabled teams of peers while building a culture of influence through relationships
• Demonstrated interest in national security issues and defense technologies, with a commitment to lifelong learning
• Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Secret / Top Secret security clearance
• Willing to travel up to 50% of the time

• Advanced Degree (MBA, etc.)
• Experience in rapid prototype development and fielding
• Exposure to robot autonomy, machine learning, sensor fusion, data analytics
• Demonstrated interest in national security issues and defense technologies
• A history of leading technical teams to build and field hardware or software products to real operating environments

*Position is full-time from Anduril HQ in Costa Mesa, CA but requires regular travel