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Salary: USD 146,000 - 220,000 / annual
Anduril Industries is seeking a Perception Systems Engineer to lead perception system development for the Maneuver Dominance Enabling Technology team. The Maneuver Dominance team develops aerial robotic systems designed to operate in large coordinated teams in concert with ground maneuver forces.
Perception enables autonomous aircraft to understand their environment and act on what they detect. This role centers on the sensing suite itself—which sensors are in the baseline and why, what the system must detect, at what range and under what conditions, how that is proven, and what evidence is provided when the capability transitions to receiving programs.
You will be a key technical leader driving perception system architecture and requirements baseline, decomposing mission needs into detection, range, field of regard, latency, and availability requirements, and allocating them across sensing, compute, and algorithms. You will own the sensor suite baseline and its configuration across platforms, including which modalities and part numbers are in the baseline for each aircraft variant, where they are installed, and interfaces to programs and airframes.
Key responsibilities include: setting and defending the sensing performance model (detection probability and false alarm rate against target size, reflectivity, range, aspect, illumination, and weather); driving the verification and validation strategy for perception including verification plans, bench and hardware-in-the-loop coverage, sensor characterization tests, flight test objectives, and evidence packages; providing technical authority at design and gate reviews; leading sensor trades that resolve real forks; driving modularity and reuse so perception ports across platforms; setting the sensing engineering practice that others inherit; owning perception in flight tests and driving the analysis loop from collected data back into requirements and architecture; and representing Anduril externally as a technical authority on airborne sensing.
You will lead this across several concurrent efforts, including in-house sensor development with partner engineering teams elsewhere in Anduril, and new sensing work as the portfolio grows. This role has depth at its center and reach at its edges, requiring someone with demonstrated experience making sensing systems work on real vehicles whose judgment about where sensing is going carries weight well beyond this team.
REQUIREMENTS:
- B.S. or M.S. in Electrical Engineering, Optics, Physics, Computer Science, Robotics, Aerospace, or similar field, or equivalent experience
- 5+ years of engineering experience on electro-optical, LiDAR, RADAR, or comparable sensing systems, including time as the technical owner of a sensing system through to fielded or flight-demonstrated performance
- Demonstrated depth in multi-modal sensor architecture and sensor selection, with working command of the detection physics that bounds each modality
- Demonstrated experience owning system architecture and interface definition for a sensing system, including interfaces to compute, autonomy consumers, and the vehicle
- Ability to exercise extremely high ownership over a complex system across design, integration, test, and flight test
- Demonstrated experience specifying and verifying sensing performance quantitatively, including detection and false alarm characterization, range performance analysis, and validation of models against measured data
- Working command of electro-optical, LiDAR, and/or RADAR system engineering fundamentals: radiometry and link budgets, detector and optics selection, noise and sensitivity metrics (NETD, NEP), resolution and MTF, and atmospheric transmission and its effect on range
- Demonstrated experience with systems engineering rigor: requirements management, traceability to verification, ICDs, and technical performance measures as a managed baseline
- Outstanding written and verbal communication, including presenting and defending technical positions to program leadership, engineering peers, and external audiences such as standards bodies, development partners, and customers
- Must be eligible to obtain and maintain a US Top Secret security clearance
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:
- Experience with learned perception in safety-relevant systems, including evaluation gates, dataset and labeling strategy, and arguments for model trustworthiness
- Experience with embedded compute and SWaP-C budgeting for airborne perception, including end-to-end latency budgets
- Experience with environmental qualification of airborne sensors (MIL-STD-810, MIL-STD-461) and airworthiness or certification evidence for aircraft
- Experience transitioning a capability from development into a delivery program or product line, including evidence handoff
- Experience as a technical lead or principal investigator in matrixed or IRAD-funded environments
- Experience with requirements management tooling such as Jama, including traceability from requirement through verification evidence
- Participation in standards or industry bodies relevant to airborne sensing or airspace integration (e.g., RTCA or SAE committee work)
