Lead Mission Software Engineer, EW
Anduril · Costa Mesa, United States · 2mo ago
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's Electronic Warfare (EW) division builds next-generation electronic warfare platforms — hardware-enabled, software-defined systems that are fielded, operational, and scaling fast. In the last year alone, the EW team delivered 30 novel system configurations into active combat operations in under a week, earned a unanimous fielding recommendation from government evaluators, and secured one of the fastest contract awards in recent defense history. This is a team that ships to the fight on timelines the defense industry isn't used to seeing. We are standing up a new Mission Software Engineering (MSE) organization within EW to own the full lifecycle of our software from development through deployment, sustainment, and customer success. This team will sit at the intersection of embedded software engineering, systems integration, and field operations — ensuring our systems don't just work in the lab, but win in contested environments.
ABOUT THE ROLE
We are looking for a Lead Mission Software Engineer to build and lead this function from the ground up. This is a foundational leadership role: you will shape the team's technical direction, hire and develop engineers, and personally contribute to the hardest problems. The team is growing rapidly — the right person is equally comfortable architecting deployment pipelines, debugging a system in the field, and mentoring an IC2 through their first production incident.
You will own operational readiness and field success for EW software products, working across the full stack — from embedded systems and RF interfaces through networking, applications, and Lattice integration. You'll collaborate closely with embedded software engineers, DSP/RFML engineers, systems architects, and growth teams to ensure our products perform reliably in operational environments and evolve rapidly based on operator feedback.
This role demands a "whatever it takes" mindset: executing in an expedient, scalable, and pragmatic way while keeping the mission top-of-mind and making sound engineering decisions to deliver successful outcomes correctly, on time, and with high quality.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Build and rapidly grow the EW Mission Software Engineering team
- Set the technical direction for mission software — architecture, engineering standards, tooling, and deployment practices
- Personally contribute hands-on engineering work: system debugging, software patching, infrastructure, and integration
- Own the delivery, installation, and sustainment of operational EW systems — from production through field deployment
- Triage field issues, drive root cause analysis, and coordinate rapid fixes across software and hardware teams
- Establish processes for incident response, post-incident review, and preventive engineering
- Partner with operators and customers to understand mission needs, translate them into engineering action, and close the feedback loop between the field and development
- Collaborate with embedded software, applications engineering, and test/QA to ensure mission-critical fixes flow into future releases
- Coordinate with release engineering to qualify and manage builds for field deployment
- Travel up to 30% to support deployments, integration events, and customer engagements
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
- 7+ years of professional experience in software engineering, with meaningful time spent on production systems that can't go down
- 2+ years leading or managing a technical team (hiring, setting direction, driving execution)
- Strong proficiency in at least two of: Haskell, Rust, C++, Go, TypeScript
- Experience with Linux systems administration and debugging in production environments
- Demonstrated ability to work across the software stack — embedded systems, networking, applications, infrastructure
- Experience supporting or operating remotely deployed software/hardware systems
- Strong communication skills and comfort engaging directly with customers on technical matters
- Track record of operating effectively in ambiguous, fast-moving environments
- Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Top Secret SCI security clearance
- Willingness to travel up to 30%
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience with electronic warfare systems, software-defined radio, or RF systems
- Experience with Haskell and/or Rust in production environments
- Familiarity with Nix/NixOS for deterministic builds and configuration management
- Experience with containerized deployments (Kubernetes, Docker) in operational or edge environments
- Experience with distributed systems, system-of-systems architectures, or C2 integration
- Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and release management for safety-critical or mission-critical software
- Prior experience in defense technology, military operations, or similarly high-stakes operational environments
- Experience building a team or engineering function from scratch
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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