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Salary: USD 166,000 - 220,000 / annual
Anduril Industries is seeking a Senior Manager to lead the Enterprise Test Capabilities organization—a centralized engineering team providing development test services across the company's full spectrum of defense and aerospace products. This role owns physical test infrastructure, specialized labs, instrumentation, calibration programs, and capital equipment that enable product divisions to execute environmental, structural, wind tunnel, and other niche qualification and characterization campaigns.
You will lead a team of development test engineers, technicians, and technical leads, translating ambiguous validation needs into executable test strategies and building scalable processes that allow Anduril to test at startup speed with engineering rigor. Key responsibilities include:
• Leading and scaling the Enterprise Test Capabilities organization across environmental, structural, wind tunnel, and specialized test execution, instrumentation, data acquisition, and physical test infrastructure.
• Owning and expanding niche test capabilities (environmental qualification, structural loads and dynamics, wind tunnel characterization) to execute complex campaigns with speed and rigor as the product portfolio grows.
• Managing capital equipment, lab infrastructure, calibration processes, and shared test assets—planning, prioritization, procurement, utilization, maintenance, and long-range capability roadmapping.
• Driving expansion of internal test capabilities to reduce dependency on external facilities and enable faster design iteration and product readiness.
• Partnering with program and product leaders to translate system-level validation needs into executable test strategies, resource plans, instrumentation architectures, and risk-based test campaigns.
• Leading test architecture and readiness planning for complex hardware programs, including fixture strategy, data requirements, sensor selection, DAQ configuration, and post-test data review.
• Balancing competing program priorities in a matrixed, high-growth environment by allocating scarce engineering talent, lab space, instrumentation, and capital equipment.
• Building scalable processes for test intake, prioritization, planning, execution, data delivery, calibration control, and lessons learned—replacing ad hoc execution with repeatable, high-velocity workflows.
• Establishing operating mechanisms for resource tracking, lab capacity, equipment utilization, calibration status, schedule risk, and program support visibility.
• Partnering with vendors, third-party labs, facilities teams, and equipment suppliers to expand internal capability and execute capital projects.
• Developing technical leaders, engineers, and technicians through career ladders, mentorship, hiring, organizational design, and performance management.
• Serving as a senior technical escalation point for high-consequence development test issues, bringing cross-disciplinary experience in loads, dynamics, environmental testing, instrumentation, and systems engineering.
Anduril is a rapidly growing defense technology company transforming U.S. and allied military capabilities with advanced technology. The company'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. The right candidate will have a passion for creative, scalable problem solving and a strong distaste for slow, paper-heavy legacy aerospace processes.
REQUIREMENTS:
• 10+ years of progressive experience in test engineering, test operations, or related hardware development disciplines within defense, aerospace, or high-reliability industries.
• 5+ years of direct leadership and people-management experience, including building teams, managing technical leads, and scaling organizations.
• Deep hands-on experience in one or more of: environmental testing (thermal, vibration, shock), structural loads and dynamics testing, wind tunnel testing, or other specialized physical test disciplines.
• Demonstrated ability to manage capital equipment portfolios, lab infrastructure, calibration programs, and multi-million-dollar test budgets.
• Experience developing and executing test strategies for complex hardware systems from development through qualification.
• Energy and passion to work at a hyper-growth startup aggressively disrupting the defense industry and firm belief in Anduril's mission.
• Deep empathy towards internal customers (product divisions and design engineers), strongly held opinions about delivering high-velocity testing services, and strong distaste for old aerospace paper-heavy, slow, and siloed testing methodologies.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with ability to translate complex physical validation requirements into executable, high-fidelity test solutions.
• Superb communication and collaboration skills with ability to manage competing divisional priorities and present technical risk, test readiness, and capability status to executive leadership and military customers.
• Strong people management skills with ability to lead, coach, and scale engineers and technical leaders in a matrixed, fast-paced enterprise support environment.
• Active Top Secret (TS) security clearance. SCI eligibility preferred.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:
• Bachelor's or master's degree in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, or closely related engineering discipline.
• Experience standing up or significantly scaling shared services or centralized test organization.
• Background in instrumentation architecture, data acquisition systems, and sensor technologies.
• Familiarity with wind tunnel design, operation, and data analysis workflows.
• Experience with defense acquisition milestones, customer test demonstrations, and qualification review processes (MIL-STD-810, MIL-HDBK-516, DO-160, or equivalent).
• Proficiency with test data analysis tools (Python, MATLAB, LabVIEW) and engineering applications (Nastran/Patran, HyperWorks).
