Senior DFx Manufacturing Engineer at Anduril in Costa Mesa, CA

ABOUT THE TEAM

Anduril's Air Dominance & Strike (AD&S) Manufacturing Engineering team is seeking a Senior DFx Engineer to drive design for manufacturability, assembly, and cost across our avionics, electronics, wiring, and harnessing subsystems. This role spans our full portfolio of autonomous aircraft, cruise missiles, and loitering munitions — ensuring that design decisions account for how hardware will be built, by whom, and at what cost.

You will bring specialty expertise in at least one of the following domains: avionics, wire harnessing, electronics (PCBA), or electrical systems. Your primary focus areas are manufacturability, assembly, and cost — the three lenses that determine whether a design can be produced at rate, by a qualified supplier, at an affordable price point. You will work directly with subject matter expert (SME) manufacturing engineers and design engineers to evaluate producibility, negotiate design trades, and drive improvements that make hardware buildable and cost-effective.

A key part of this role is supporting the selection and qualification of contract manufacturers — assessing supplier capabilities against DFx requirements and helping ensure that external production partners can deliver to the quality, rate, and cost targets our programs demand. This is an inherently cross-functional role: you will work daily with supply chain, quality, operations, and program teams in addition to ME and DE.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Execute DFx analysis across avionics, electronics, wiring, and harnessing subsystems for AD&S programs, with a primary focus on manufacturability, assembly, and cost.
• Participate in and help lead structured DFM/DFA/DFC reviews at key design milestones, applying rigorous scoring to identify producibility and cost risks and drive design changes before they reach production.
• Work directly with SME manufacturing engineers and design engineers to evaluate designs, translate manufacturing constraints into actionable feedback, and support design trades that balance performance, producibility, and cost.
• Support the selection and qualification of contract manufacturers for avionics, electronics, and harnessing production — assessing supplier manufacturing capability, process maturity, and cost competitiveness against DFx requirements.
• Participate in supplier manufacturing assessments including facility reviews, process audits, and capability evaluations.
• Contribute to should-cost models and cost-driver analyses for electronics and harnessing assemblies, identifying design changes that reduce unit cost without compromising quality or performance.
• Develop and maintain DFx standards, guidelines, and scorecards specific to electronics manufacturing processes including SMT, wave/selective solder, conformal coating, potting, wire harness fabrication, and box-build assembly.
• Analyze designs across key lenses — manufacturability/assembly, cost structure, adherence to specification, process capability, and technology maturity — to contribute to quantified risk assessments that inform engineering and program decisions.
• Partner with supply chain to align DFx requirements with sourcing strategy, ensuring that designs are producible by the suppliers we intend to use.
• Collaborate with quality engineering to ensure DFx findings flow into inspection plans, acceptance criteria, and supplier quality requirements.
• Close the loop between production floor feedback, supplier performance data, and upstream design improvements.
• Contribute to the DFx toolkit — templates, scoring rubrics, cost models, lessons-learned databases, and training materials — so that DFx knowledge scales across the organization.
• Travel to production sites, contract manufacturers, and supplier facilities (~20%, depending on business needs).

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, or a related field.
• 8+ years of experience in manufacturing engineering, producibility engineering, or DFx with a significant focus on electronics, avionics, wiring, or harnessing — with specialty expertise in at least one of these domains.
• Strong working knowledge of electronics and/or harnessing manufacturing processes: SMT placement and reflow, wave and selective soldering, conformal coating, potting and encapsulation, wire harness fabrication (cut/strip/crimp/solder/mold), and electromechanical box-build.
• Experience participating in or leading DFM/DFA reviews and translating findings into measurable design improvements that reduce cost and improve producibility.
• Experience supporting contract manufacturer evaluations — including facility assessments, process capability reviews, or production readiness evaluations.
• Understanding of cost drivers in electronics and harnessing production, with exposure to should-cost modeling or cost analysis.
• Ability to read and critically evaluate electrical schematics, PCB layouts, harness drawings, and mechanical packaging for producibility and cost impact.
• Working knowledge of IPC standards (IPC-A-610, J-STD-001, IPC-620, IPC-6012) and their application to design, process, and supplier qualification decisions.
• Proven ability to work cross-functionally across design engineering, manufacturing engineering, supply chain, quality, and operations.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to present DFx and cost findings to engineering teams and drive alignment on design changes.
• Comfortable working across multiple programs simultaneously in a fast-paced, high-growth environment.
• Personal experience physically building or reworking electronic assemblies or harnesses. Hands-on credibility matters.
• Must be a U.S. Person due to required access to U.S. export controlled information or facilities.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Master's degree in engineering or a related field.
• Specialty expertise in two or more of: avionics, PCBA/electronics, wire harnessing, electrical systems.
• Experience in aerospace or defense electronics production, particularly with qualified or flight-critical hardware.
• Familiarity with AS9100/AS9102 quality management systems and First Article Inspection processes.
• Experience with PCBA insourcing or standing up electronics manufacturing lines (SMT, test, integration).
• Proficiency in ECAD tools (Altium, KiCad, or similar) sufficient to review designs independently.
• Background in Design of Experiments (DOE), statistical process control, or Six Sigma applied to electronics manufacturing.
• Experience with value engineering or formal cost reduction programs in a production environment.
• Appropriate clearance classification.