Chief Engineer, Air Defense, Middle East Programs

Anduril Industries; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 191,000 - 253,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity grants

Competitive benefits package

Job summary

Anduril Industries is seeking a Chief Engineer for Air Defense in the Middle East. You will own system architecture, integration strategy, fielding readiness, and sustainment outcomes across programs, coordinating with partners, primes, and government offices.

You’ll drive technical decisions that keep schedules aligned and ensure operational effectiveness in deployed sites. You will travel up to 50% of the year to field sites, lead technical reviews, and shape the engineering basis of estimates

Qualifications

• Engineering, science, or other technical degree, or equivalent practical experience.
• 10+ years of systems or engineering experience, with a track record of technical ownership on fielded systems.
• End-to-end technical accountability for whether a delivered system actually worked in an operational environment, not only for producing its design artifacts.
• Experience integrating third-party and customer-furnished hardware and software into a system you were accountable for.
• Ability to carry technical authority across teams that do not report to you, and to brief senior technical leadership and external customers directly.
• Ability to define a verification approach for a full program scope, negotiate requirements and acceptance with a customer, and write a credible basis of estimate.
• Willingness to travel up to 50% of the year, with Middle East travel the majority of it.
• Eligibility to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Secret security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Serve as Chief Engineer for Air Defense's Middle East programs. Own system architecture, integration strategy, fielding readiness, and sustainment outcomes across every program in the portfolio.
• Define interfaces to partner radars and effectors, customer-furnished equipment, legacy command and control being displaced, and third-party systems the customer has already bought.
• Own the engineering position in negotiations and write the basis of estimate that supports it.
• Deploy to the region, work alongside operators and field service teams, and own technical performance in the field.
• Represent Anduril's engineering position to partner nation ministries, program offices, primes, and authorization authorities.
• Shape the technical content of pursuits as the regional pipeline expands faster than the delivered baseline.

Skills

Technical ownership

Systems engineering

Cross-team leadership

Customer engagement

Travel readiness

Security clearance eligibility

Education

Technical degree or equivalent practical experience

Job description

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

Anduril is fielding integrated air defense in the Middle East. As the single named technical authority, you own the architecture and technical performance of Anduril's sensors and effectors, the partner and customer-furnished systems we integrate, the networks that connect them, and the sustainment posture that keeps each site running once it goes live thousands of miles from the nearest Anduril lab.

You will work across direct commercial sales, foreign military sales executed jointly with primes and government program offices, and multi-site rollouts already at initial operating capability. Each carries different engineering consequences: localization requirements that reshape the technical baseline, integration scope that is negotiated rather than specified, and milestones that depend on third-party integrations landing on schedule. They draw on different parts of the same product line, and you maintain the technical picture and keep the answers consistent across them.

You will spend real time forward because Middle East deployments aren't run from a desk, and the technical decisions that matter most are made next to the system with the operators who have to trust it.

What You'll Do

Technical authority for the region. Serve as Chief Engineer for Air Defense's Middle East programs. Own system architecture, integration strategy, fielding readiness, and sustainment outcomes across every program in the portfolio. Set the technical baseline, chair design reviews, and make the technical decisions that keep schedules aligned with the engineering. Exercise this authority across engineers who don't report to you.

Integration across systems you do not own. Middle East programs integrate coalition hardware. Define interfaces to partner radars and effectors, customer-furnished equipment, legacy command and control being displaced, and third-party systems the customer has already bought. Much of the integration scope arrives underspecified. Negotiate it directly with partner vendors and government program offices, then give Anduril a clear account of what integrates cleanly, what requires an engineering sprint, and what isn't technically ready.

Foreign sales engineering. Direct commercial sales and foreign military sales create engineering requirements beyond those of domestic programs, including releasability and export posture, in-country localization and production content, sustainment concepts measured in years rather than task orders, and technical terms negotiated into the contract before design begins. Own the engineering position in those negotiations and write the basis of estimate that supports it.

Field operations and recovery. Deploy to the region, work alongside operators and field service teams, and own technical performance in the field. When a fielded site degrades, lead the recovery under time pressure and across a time zone gap, then feed what you learn back into the product to prevent the same failure at the next site.

Customer technical authority. Represent Anduril's engineering position to partner nation ministries, program offices, primes, and authorization authorities. Bring their requirements and constraints back to Anduril. Translate customer-stated operational requirements into executable technical plans, and explain engineering constraints in terms a customer can act on.

Growth. Shape the technical content of pursuits as the regional pipeline expands faster than the delivered baseline. Write credible estimates and flag any commitment that the engineering can't support.

Required Qualifications

• Engineering, science, or other technical degree, or equivalent practical experience
• 10+ years of systems or engineering experience, with a track record of technical ownership on fielded systems
• End-to-end technical accountability for whether a delivered system actually worked in an operational environment, not only for producing its design artifacts
• Experience integrating third-party and customer-furnished hardware and software into a system you were accountable for
• Ability to carry technical authority across teams that do not report to you, and to brief senior technical leadership and external customers directly
• Ability to define a verification approach for a full program scope, negotiate requirements and acceptance with a customer, and write a credible basis of estimate
• Willingness to travel up to 50% of the year, with Middle East travel the majority of it
• Eligibility to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Secret security clearance

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior experience delivering to Middle East defense customers, with foreign military or civilian partners
• Foreign military sales or direct commercial sales engineering experience, including releasability, export, and in-country localization or offset requirements
• Depth in one or more of: radar and sensor integration, effector integration, air defense command and control, tactical networking, or cross-domain solutions
• Experience standing up sustainment for a system fielded OCONUS
• Arabic language skills

US Salary Range

$191,000—$253,000 USD

Benefits

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:

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.

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.