New

Mission Operations Lead, Maritime

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

At Anduril, we are developing unmanned systems for subsurface, surface, land, and air domains that will leverage unsupervised autonomy for the delivery of multi-mission capability to our customers. Deciding what to build — and in what order — requires people who can connect operational problems, threat-informed scenarios, customer needs, and product employment concepts to the capability we field. We are looking for a Mission Operations Lead to do that work at the enterprise level, based at our Costa Mesa, California headquarters.

ABOUT THE JOB

Our next Mission Operations Lead has built and executed plans in the maritime domain, has stood watch, and has been to sea, preferably using uncrewed systems. That background is what separates an analytic product that operators recognize as real from one that reads well and gets ignored. Equally important is the ability to carry that work into a room of senior military and civilian decision-makers and hold it there: this role briefs Commanding Officers, high-level civilians, and our own executive team, and it is expected to give direct answers under hard questioning.

Customer engagement is key, with opportunity to embed directly with our warfighters to provide real-time analysis and feedback on Anduril products. You will normalize how mission problems are framed so that competing programs can be compared on the same terms, and so that investment, roadmap, and capture decisions rest on a defensible operational argument rather than on whichever program briefed most recently.

Being co-located with product leadership, engineering leads, growth, and program directors is the point of the job. You will spend your days in the rooms where trades get made: pressure-testing a concept of employment with the engineers who have to build it, reconciling a program director’s field reality with a product lead’s roadmap, and giving executives the one-page operational case they need to commit capital. Expect up to 50% travel across company facilities, test and demonstration sites, waterfront and fleet concentration areas, and customer locations — the analysis has to survive contact with the water, not just the whiteboard.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

  • Understand the enterprise-level mission analysis for the maritime portfolio — identify operational problems, capability gaps, and opportunities for differentiated system employment, and maintain a coherent picture of them across programs rather than one program at a time and be able to communicate them to the customer across the Maritime suite of products
  • Develop and refine concepts of operation, concepts of employment, operational vignettes, mission threads, and use cases for current and future systems, and keep them current as designs and customer priorities move
  • Inform capability roadmaps, IRAD and investment prioritization, and product-market fit assessments by making the operational case for where the next dollar and the next engineer should go
  • Analyze threat environments, customer missions, force structure, operational constraints, and campaign-level context, and translate that context into capability priorities and defensible requirements for product and engineering teams
  • Compare alternative capability approaches and assess trade-offs in mission utility, feasibility, scalability, cost, survivability, and operational relevance — including the approaches we should decline to pursue
  • Convert results from at-sea demonstrations, field test events, and program execution into portfolio-level lessons that change what we build, closing the loop between the deck plate and the roadmap
  • Partner with systems analysts, engineers, operators, program directors, and business-line leaders to ensure technical solutions remain anchored to real warfighting needs as programs mature
  • Represent the operational perspective in cross-functional reviews, gate decisions, and portfolio planning cycles, and serve as a trusted interpreter between customer language, operational need, product strategy, and engineering implications

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

  • Maritime operational planning experience — building, staffing, and executing operational or campaign plans in the maritime domain at a unit, strike group, numbered fleet, MOC, or component command level
  • Experience tactically employing AUV capabilities or equivalent autonomous system experience
  • Demonstrated ability to brief and defend operational objectives, and platform capabilities and limitations in front of senior military and civilian decision-makers —Commanding Officers, high-level civilians, and corporate executives — including under direct and skeptical questioning
  • Ability to decompose ambiguous operational problems into structured executable strategies at the tactical level
  • Strong understanding of maritime missions, operational concepts, threat-informed planning, and the relationship between technology and warfighting outcomes
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to produce executive-level briefings
  • Demonstrated ability to influence decisions across technical, operational, and business stakeholders without owning them — this role earns its authority through the quality of its analysis
  • Ability to hold a portfolio-level view: comfort working several programs, mission areas, and time horizons in parallel and prioritizing among them
  • Strong judgment, intellectual curiosity, and comfort operating with incomplete information in a fast-paced environment
  • Ability to translate between customer language, operational need, product strategy, and engineering implications
  • Willingness to travel up to 50% to multiple company facilities, test and demonstration sites, customer locations, and at-sea or field events
  • Currently possesses and is able to maintain an active U.S. Secret security clearance

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

  • 8+ years of experience supporting maritime, undersea, or autonomous systems mission areas; experience across air, surface, C2, ISR, fires, or logistics is also valued
  • Watch floor experience — TAO, watch officer, battle watch captain, or equivalent time in a maritime operations center, fleet or component watch floor, or afloat combat information center, where decisions were made on incomplete information against a clock
  • Significant at-sea operational experience, including underway deployments, and credibility with the operators who will employ these systems
  • Prior military, DoD, defense industry, intelligence community, operational test, or tactical level development experience
  • Familiarity with CONOPS development, campaign analysis, wargaming, modeling and simulation, operational test, or requirements development
  • Experience working directly with government customers, senior military leaders, product teams, or engineering organizations
  • Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Top Secret security clearance

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.

 

Protecting Yourself from Recruitment Scams

Anduril is committed to maintaining the integrity of our Talent acquisition process and the security of our candidates. We've observed a rise in sophisticated phishing and fraudulent schemes where individuals impersonate Anduril representatives, luring job seekers with false interviews or job offers. These scammers often attempt to extract payment or sensitive personal information.

To ensure your safety and help you navigate your job search with confidence, please keep the following critical points in mind:

  • No Financial Requests: Anduril will never solicit payment or demand personal financial details (such as banking information, credit card numbers, or social security numbers) at any stage of our hiring process. Our legitimate recruitment is entirely free for candidates.

  • Please always verify communications:
    • Direct from Anduril: If you receive an email from one of our recruiters, it will only come from an @anduril.com address.
    • Via Agency Partner: If contacted by a recruiting agency for an Anduril role, their email will clearly identify their agency. If you suspect any suspicious activity, please verify the agency's authenticity by reaching out to contact@anduril.com. 

  • Exercise Caution with Unsolicited Outreach: If you receive any communication that appears suspicious, contains grammatical errors, or makes unusual requests, do not engage. Always confirm the sender's email domain is @anduril.com before providing any personal information or clicking on links.

  • What to Do If You Suspect Fraud: Should you encounter any questionable or fraudulent outreach claiming to be from Anduril, please report it immediately to contact@anduril.com. Your proactive caution is invaluable in protecting your personal information and upholding the security and trustworthiness of our recruitment efforts.

 

Data Privacy

To view Anduril's candidate data privacy policy, please visit https://anduril.com/applicant-privacy-notice/. 

 

By submitting your application, you consent to Anduril Industries using a third-party service provider to conduct pre-employment risk, integrity, and due diligence screening and assessing potential risks as part of your application process. This third-party service provider provides risk-intelligence services that may include analysis of sanctions and watchlists, adverse media, public-record information, and other lawful open-source or commercial data sources. This third-party service provider does not act as a consumer reporting agency. Use of this provider helps to ensure compliance with applicable laws and protect technology, intellectual property, and organizational security.

Create a Job Alert

Interested in building your career at Anduril Industries? Get future opportunities sent straight to your email.

Apply for this job

*

indicates a required field

Resume/CV*

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Cover Letter

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Select...

Do you presently hold an active U.S. security clearance, or are you eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance?  

For more information about U.S. Security Clearances: click here. 

Select...
Select...

Are you any of the following “protected individual(s)” as defined in the Immigration and Naturalization Act, 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)?:

Select...

Are you authorized to work in the United States?

Select...
Select...

Have you previously applied to a position at Anduril?

Select...
Select...

Do you currently, or have you in the last 5 years, worked for the US government (e.g., Congressional staffer, member of the military, state, or federal agencies) and had oversight or similar responsibility over Anduril’s business or other interests?   

Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Anduril Industries’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Select...
Select...
Race & Ethnicity Definitions

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measure the effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categories is as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.

Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability

Form CC-305
Page 1 of 1
OMB Control Number 1250-0005
Expires 07/31/2029

Why are you being asked to complete this form?

We are a federal contractor or subcontractor. The law requires us to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We have a goal of having at least 7% of our workers as people with disabilities. The law says we must measure our progress towards this goal. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had one. People can become disabled, so we need to ask this question at least every five years.

Completing this form is voluntary, and we hope that you will choose to do so. Your answer is confidential. No one who makes hiring decisions will see it. Your decision to complete the form and your answer will not harm you in any way. If you want to learn more about the law or this form, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) website at www.dol.gov/ofccp.

How do you know if you have a disability?

A disability is a condition that substantially limits one or more of your “major life activities.” If you have or have ever had such a condition, you are a person with a disability. Disabilities include, but are not limited to:

  • Alcohol or other substance use disorder (not currently using drugs illegally)
  • Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS
  • Blind or low vision
  • Cancer (past or present)
  • Cardiovascular or heart disease
  • Celiac disease
  • Cerebral palsy
  • Deaf or serious difficulty hearing
  • Diabetes
  • Disfigurement, for example, disfigurement caused by burns, wounds, accidents, or congenital disorders
  • Epilepsy or other seizure disorder
  • Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, irritable bowel syndrome
  • Intellectual or developmental disability
  • Mental health conditions, for example, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD
  • Missing limbs or partially missing limbs
  • Mobility impairment, benefiting from the use of a wheelchair, scooter, walker, leg brace(s) and/or other supports
  • Nervous system condition, for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS)
  • Neurodivergence, for example, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, other learning disabilities
  • Partial or complete paralysis (any cause)
  • Pulmonary or respiratory conditions, for example, tuberculosis, asthma, emphysema
  • Short stature (dwarfism)
  • Traumatic brain injury
Select...

PUBLIC BURDEN STATEMENT: According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete.