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Mission Systems Lead, Omen

Anduril - Costa Mesa, CA, United States - In-office - posted 2026-10-14

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Salary: USD 253,000 - 336,000 / annual

Anduril Industries is seeking a Mission Systems Lead to join the Omen team at the Costa Mesa headquarters. Omen is an autonomous hover-to-cruise air vehicle (AAV) that combines the endurance and payload capacity of larger aircraft with runway independence, operating from ship decks, beaches, and remote clearings. Omen is the first tail-sitter aircraft with a mass-production contract, with an order of 50 systems. In this role, you will lead a technical team in developing and integrating Omen's Mission Systems from concept through delivery. This encompasses mission perception, mission autonomy, and payload systems. You will work closely with program leadership, cross-functional teams, and third-party vendors to develop fully integrated systems tied to customer requirements with traceability to technical decisions. Key responsibilities include: - Owning customer success through design and delivery of fully operational mission systems covering Mission Perception, Mission Autonomy, and Payloads - Building and leading the Mission Systems team, hiring and managing multi-disciplinary engineers, mentoring junior and senior software engineers, and establishing team norms and technical standards - Defining and owning the technical roadmap for Omen Mission Systems across short, medium, and long-term horizons - Owning the software stack enabling autonomous mission execution, including mission design, planning, operation, and debrief toolchains - Owning payload module integration with the host vehicle mission system stack, including power, bandwidth, timing, and autonomy interfaces for passive/active sensors, launched effects, and electronic warfare payloads - Owning sensing and world model development for safe and assured navigation, including GPS-denied operations and recovery to moving or austere landing sites - Leading demonstrations of autonomy, payload operations, and perception capabilities from lab through surrogates to Omen - Partnering with the Vehicle Software team on Vehicle Management System and Mission System stack interfaces - Driving architecture selection and design for robotic mission systems, including hardware, compute, storage, and network architecture with modular open systems approaches - Defining and owning payload interface control documents (ICDs) governing third-party and government-furnished payload vendor integration - Traveling to support test events, vendor collaboration, and end-user engagements up to 25% of the time You will operate in a lean, high-ownership culture where you directly shape the product and move at velocity to fly new designs within months, not years. REQUIREMENTS: - Experience as a Senior or Staff robotics or software development engineer - Experience managing engineering teams within a high-performing technology organization - Experience with development and sustainment of distributed software platform and application architectures running under dynamic network topologies - Proficiency with Python and modern systems/application programming languages (C++, Rust) - Deep understanding of autonomous systems, including 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, or 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 and building team cohesion and capacity - Operational experience with autonomous air systems, ideally Group 3 or shipboard/expeditionary launch and recovery

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