Senior Recruiter at Anduril in Costa Mesa, CA

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 Role
As a Senior Recruiter on our team, you are more than just a talent partner; you are a critical member of the business, embedded directly within Centralized Production, scaling both the Production Business Operations and Manufacturing teams. Your mission is to own the end-to-end hiring process for the production teams you support, acting as a trusted advisor to hiring managers and a master of your craft in one of the most competitive and specialized talent markets in defense technology.
What You'll Do
End-to-End Production Hiring Execution
Own the full recruiting lifecycle for your assigned manufacturing and business operations roles — from sourcing and screening to offer negotiation and closing — ensuring a world-class candidate experience at every step.
Develop and execute creative sourcing strategies tailored to production talent markets: manufacturing engineers, supply chain leaders, quality directors, production technicians, test engineers, and operations managers are not found through the same channels as software engineers.
Build robust pipelines using differentiated approaches: industry conferences, trade associations, referral networks, SOBO campaigns, competitor mapping (defense primes, OEMs, contract manufacturers), and community-based sourcing for site-specific roles.
Manage the interview process, including conducting initial screens, preparing candidates and interviewers, and facilitating debriefs to drive effective hiring decisions.
Navigate production-specific closing dynamics: relocation to manufacturing sites, shift schedules, clearance timelines, comp benchmarking against primes, and career trajectory conversations for candidates moving from established programs to high-growth environments.
Embedded Business Partnership
Partner closely with your assigned hiring managers to deeply understand their production hiring needs, site dynamics, program milestones, and the technical bar for their teams.
Act as a production talent advisor, using data and market insights to guide intake conversations, shape job descriptions, calibrate leveling, and set realistic expectations for role timelines given location and clearance requirements.
Provide transparent, regular updates on pipeline health, search progress, and potential roadblocks to your business stakeholders — translating recruiting metrics into production business language (contract milestones, ramp timelines, site readiness).
Develop deep understanding of production org structures: the difference between Manufacturing Engineering, Manufacturing Operations, Supply Chain, Quality, and Production Leadership — and how talent moves between these functions and across the industry.
Functional Craft & Collaboration
Contribute to the Production Recruiting Center of Excellence by sharing best practices, market intelligence, comp data, and high-quality fungible candidates with your peers across divisions.
Partner with your Functional Manager to develop production domain expertise, set development goals, and grow your career within the production recruiting specialization.
Uphold data integrity in our recruiting systems (ATS/CRM) to ensure accurate reporting and analytics — your data powers the Division's visibility into hiring health.
Build and maintain market intelligence on production talent: where candidates sit (by company, geography, clearance level), how they move, what motivates them, and what Anduril's value proposition is relative to the competition.
Who You Are
Required Qualifications
8+ years of full-cycle recruiting experience, with demonstrated ability to independently manage complex production searches and mentor junior team members.
Proven experience sourcing and closing production talent in competitive markets — manufacturing engineers, supply chain professionals, quality leaders, or production operations roles.
Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to build rapport and trust with production hiring managers who value directness, domain knowledge, and results over recruiting process.
A data-informed mindset, with experience using metrics (pipeline velocity, conversion rates, source effectiveness, time-to-fill) to guide your approach and track your impact.
Ability to operate with a high sense of urgency and bias for action — production hiring is tied to contract milestones, site launches, and revenue timelines that don't wait.
Comfort working across multiple sites and locations, understanding that production talent is geographically distributed and site-specific.
Preferred Qualifications
Direct experience recruiting for manufacturing, production operations, supply chain, or quality roles in defense, aerospace, automotive, robotics, or advanced manufacturing industries.
Experience recruiting for roles that require security clearances, with understanding of clearance timelines and their impact on candidate availability.
Familiarity with production org structures and title progressions (Technician → Lead → Supervisor → Manager → Director → VP/Head of Production).
Experience recruiting for new site launches, manufacturing ramps, or greenfield production facilities.
A passion for the defense technology mission and genuine curiosity about how things get built at scale.
Experience working in a matrixed or similarly complex organizational structure with dual reporting lines.
Demonstrated ability to influence and guide hiring managers on best practices, market realities, and talent strategy trade-offs.
US Salary Range
$146,000—$194,000 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.
Protecting Yourself from Recruitment Scams
Anduril is committed to maintaining the integrity of our Talent acquisition process and the security of our candidates. We've observed a rise in sophisticated phishing and fraudulent schemes where individuals impersonate Anduril representatives, luring job seekers with false interviews or job offers. These scammers often attempt to extract payment or sensitive personal information.
To ensure your safety and help you navigate your job search with confidence, please keep the following critical points in mind:
No Financial Requests: Anduril will never solicit payment or demand personal financial details (such as banking information, credit card numbers, or social security numbers) at any stage of our hiring process. Our legitimate recruitment is entirely free for candidates.
Please always verify communications:
Direct from Anduril: If you receive an email from one of our recruiters, it will only come from an @anduril.com address.
Via Agency Partner: If contacted by a recruiting agency for an Anduril role, their email will clearly identify their agency. If you suspect any suspicious activity, please verify the agency's authenticity by reaching out to contact@anduril.com.
Exercise Caution with Unsolicited Outreach: If you receive any communication that appears suspicious, contains grammatical errors, or makes unusual requests, do not engage. Always confirm the sender's email domain is @anduril.com before providing any personal information or clicking on links.
What to Do If You Suspect Fraud: Should you encounter any questionable or fraudulent outreach claiming to be from Anduril, please report it immediately to contact@anduril.com. Your proactive caution is invaluable in protecting your personal information and upholding the security and trustworthiness of our recruitment efforts.
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.