Mission Systems Lead, Omen

Anduril Industries; Costa Mesa (CA); On-site; USD 253,000 - 336,000; Full time

Job summary

Anduril Industries in Costa Mesa, CA, is seeking a Mission Systems Lead to guide the Omen program. You will lead a technical team responsible for mission perception, autonomy, and payloads, delivering integrated systems from concept through delivery.

This role emphasizes ownership, fast iteration, and close collaboration with Vehicle Software and external vendors. Candidates should have senior robotics or software engineering experience and a track record of leading cross‑functional teams.

Qualifications

• Experience as a Senior or staff robotics or software development engineer.
• Experience managing engineering teams within a high performing technology organization.
• Experience with the development and sustainment of distributed software platform and application architectures, running under dynamic network topologies.
• Experience with Python and modern systems/application programming languages (e.g., C++, Rust).
• Deep understanding of autonomous systems, inclusive of perception and payload capabilities across commercial and military mission sets.
• Experience within the product delivery lifecycle including manufacturing, system acceptance, deployment, and sustainment.
• Familiarity with vehicle management systems and Systems Engineering concepts, including requirements traceability and ICDs.
• Familiarity with modular open systems approaches and standard interface protocols for air vehicle mission systems.
• Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Secret security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Own the design and delivery of fully operational mission systems for a new Anduril platform, covering perception, autonomy, and payloads.
• Build and lead the Mission Systems team. Hire and manage multi-disciplinary engineers, mentor, set standards.
• Define and own the technical roadmap for Omen Mission Systems across short, medium, and long term horizons.
• Mission Autonomy: Own the software stack enabling autonomous execution of customer missions.
• Mission Payloads: Own integration of payload modules with host vehicle, including power, bandwidth, timing, and interfaces.
• Mission Perception: Own sensing and world model development, safe navigation in GPS-denied conditions.

Skills

Senior/Staff robotics eng

Engineering team leadership

Distributed software architectures

Python & C/C++/Rust

Autonomous systems

Product lifecycle

Vehicle management systems

Modular open systems

Security clearance eligible

Education

Bachelor's degree in Robotics, Mechatronics, Computer Science, Engineering, a relevant field, or equivalent experience

Job description

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 is seeking a Mission Systems Lead to join the Omen team at our Costa Mesa HQ. Omen is Anduril's hover-to-cruise autonomous air vehicle (AAV) that packs the endurance, payload, and mission flexibility of much larger airplanes into a novel runway-independent Group 3 platform. Omen can operate from ship decks, beaches, or remote island clearings, providing true runway independence and freedom of maneuver across defense and civilian domains. Omen is the first tail‑sitter aircraft with a mass‑production contract, with an order of 50 systems representing a decisive investment that anchors production and accelerates the development of future systems.

You will work on new aircraft development in a lean, high‑ownership culture where you directly shape the product and operate at a velocity to fly new designs within months, not years

ABOUT THE JOB
You will lead a technical team in the development and integration of Omen's Mission Systems, from initial concept through delivery. This encompasses mission perception, mission autonomy, and payload systems. You will work closely with program leadership, teams from other Anduril products, and third party system vendors to develop fully integrated Mission Systems based on requirements that are tied to customer inputs, with traceability to program office technical decisions.

Your spectrum of support will be diverse in nature and require you to leverage your technical expertise as well as leadership skills to set objectives, build cross‑functional teams, and rapidly drive tasks to completion. The ability to leverage your intuition and prior experience will be key in making sure the right design, analysis, and test steps are completed to ensure success. The ideal candidate will leverage their experience executing and successfully completing prior highly optimized multi‑disciplinary projects.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Own customer success through the design and delivery of fully operational mission systems for a new Anduril platform, covering Mission Perception, Mission Autonomy, and Payloads.
• Build and lead the Mission Systems team. Hire and manage multi‑disciplinary engineers, mentor Junior and Senior Software Engineers from differing backgrounds, and set the team norms, technical standards, and review practices that let the team move quickly while delivering a fieldable solution.
• Define and own the technical roadmap for Omen Mission Systems across short, medium, and long term horizons, balancing delivery against the current production commitment with the architecture investments that carry the platform forward.
• Mission Autonomy: Own the software stack that enables Omen to autonomously execute customer defined missions. Includes a lifecycle toolchain covering mission design, planning, operation, and debrief, along with operator command and control.
• Mission Payloads: Own integration of payload modules with the host vehicle mission system stack, including power, bandwidth, timing, and autonomy interfaces. Integrations to include passive and active sensor modalities along with launched effects, electronic warfare payloads and more.
• Mission Perception: Own sensing and world model development, and safe and assured navigation, including operation in GPS‑denied conditions and recovery to moving or austere landing sites.
• Lead demonstrations of Autonomy, Payload operations, and Perception kits in increasingly representative environments from the lab to surrogates to Omen.
• Partner with the Vehicle Software team on interfacing requirements between the Vehicle Management System and Mission System stacks.
• Drive architecture selection and design for robotic mission systems, including hardware selection, compute, storage and network architecture, with explicit consideration of modular open systems approaches.
• Define and own the payload interface control documents (ICDs) governing integration with third‑party and government‑furnished payload vendors.
• Travel to support test events, vendor collaboration, end‑user engagements and/or co‑locate with other teams up to 25% of the time.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience as a Senior or staff robotics or software development engineer
• Experience managing engineering teams within a high performing technology organization
• Experience with the development and sustainment of distributed software platform and application architectures, running under dynamic network topologies
• Experience with Python and modern systems/application programming languages (e.g., C++, Rust)
• Deep understanding of autonomous systems, inclusive of perception and payload capabilities across commercial and military mission sets
• Experience within the product delivery lifecycle including manufacturing, system acceptance, deployment, and sustainment
• Familiarity with vehicle management systems and Systems Engineering concepts, including requirements traceability and ICDs
• Familiarity with modular open systems approaches and standard interface protocols for air vehicle mission systems
• Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Secret security clearance

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor's degree in Robotics, Mechatronics, Computer Science, Engineering, a relevant field, or equivalent experience
• Experience with high assurance safety critical software, modeling and simulation, and comprehensive unit, integration, and regression test suites
• Experience delivering perception, world modeling, or assured navigation capability for autonomous vehicles in GPS‑denied environments
• Experience building mission planning, operator control, or post‑mission debrief tooling for uncrewed systems
• Experience integrating third‑party or government‑furnished payloads into a new host platform, including ICD negotiation with external vendors
• Experience troubleshooting and analyzing remotely deployed software systems
• Track record of mentoring senior engineers, building team cohesion and capacity
• Operational experience with autonomous air systems, ideally Group 3 or shipboard/expeditionary launch and recovery

US Salary Range

$253,000-$336,000 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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