Deployment Lead, USAF at Anduril… · Irvine

About the Team

Anduril’s Air Defense team builds robots that find other robots and knock them out of the sky. At a time when air superiority can no longer be taken for granted, we provide mission critical capabilities to warfighters. From detection to tracking, identification, deterrence, and defeat, our family of networked sensors and effectors enables our customers to rapidly close the kill chain against a broad range of UAS threats. Working across product, engineering, sales, logistics, operations, and mission success, the Air Defense team develops, tests, deploys, and sustains our Family of Systems (FoS) in challenging operational environments worldwide.

About the Job

In your role as a Mission Operations Deployment Lead on the Air Defense team, you are responsible for delivering and sustaining a capability that meets our customers’ mission requirements and exceeds their expectations. You fulfill this responsibility through rigorous operational execution, detail orientation, proactive communication, deep mission understanding, and hard-won product expertise. You feel ownership over the health and performance of all assets and technologies deployed to your customers and users, and ensure that the system delivers when they need it most. You represent Anduril to our customers, building their confidence and trust through your professionalism and commitment to excellence. You also represent our customers back to Anduril, communicating user feedback and lessons learned to continuously improve our product and our team in response to evolving mission needs. Above all, you set the standard for what good looks like for your deployment, and you rally your Anduril teammates to meet that standard every single day.

In this role, you will manage domestic deployments of Anduril’s Air Defense products while ensuring mission readiness to support national security infrastructure. Collaborating closely with the Program Manager and Program Chief Engineer, you will play a crucial role in developing long-term deployment and sustainment operations aligned with customer priorities. As a key team member, you will engage across multiple business lines and facilitate customer interactions, making flexibility, humility, and a collaborative mindset essential qualities for success.

What You’ll Do

• Deployment planning and execution: We execute hundreds of deployment events each year, including site installations, test and evaluation exercises, demonstrations, and training and maintenance visits. You will orchestrate these events, leading a cross-functional team that spans hardware supply, logistics, engineering, and more to do whatever it takes to achieve mission success for Anduril and our customers. Meticulous, resourceful, and detailed-oriented, you will manage every step of the deployment process, from site survey to testing, pack-out, installation, training, and sustainment. No job is too small. You consistently demonstrate extraordinary judgment, grit, and composure in high-pressure situations. You anticipate every contingency, build lightweight processes, soberly assess and mitigate risk, and deliberately learn from your experiences to continuously improve.
• Relationship management: Build trust with customers, industry partners, users, and Anduril teammates through effective communication, positive attitude, and follow-through. With careful listening and observation, you internalize your counterpart’s priorities and requirements. With empathy and responsiveness, you quickly build rapport, trust, and confidence in our capability. You develop relationships across the organization and communicate honestly and directly. You are committed to giving and receiving feedback well. Your partners always know what you expect from them, and know exactly what to expect from you.
• Mission expertise: Develop a deep knowledge of your customer’s mission requirements, including the nature of the threats they face, regulatory challenges, resource constraints, rules of engagement, and more. You will become a subject matter expert and the voice of the customer, capable of effectively communicating requirements and CONOPS to Anduril engineers so they can continue to enhance our capability to meet evolving mission needs. You are deeply motivated to shape the future of air defense.
• Product expertise: Develop a thorough understanding of the capabilities and limitations of Anduril’s Family of Systems. You are innately curious about the technology underpinning our capability, and are not satisfied with a superficial understanding of how and why it works. You are constantly educating yourself about the strengths and weaknesses of different sensor modalities, the challenges of sensor fusion, power and networking requirements, and more. You will become an opinionated power user who can reliably forecast how our capability will perform against a broad range of threat profiles, environmental conditions, and mission constraints.

Required qualifications

• Advanced degree or 3-5+ years experience in a technical field, preferably in the defense, national security, or aerospace domain
• Highly organized creative problem-solver with proven project management skills
• Experienced in the creation and upkeep of documentation for new or developing processes
• Proven experience leading tech-enabled teams of peers while building a culture of influence through relationships
• Deep interest in national security issues and defense technologies, with a commitment to lifelong learning
• Experience translating technical concepts into operational requirements and performance specifications
• Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously and prioritize tasks effectively
• Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Secret security clearance
• Willing to travel up to 50% of the time