Air Vehicle Lead

Anduril Industries • Costa Mesa, CA

1d • Onsite

About The Position

Anduril is seeking an Air Vehicle Lead to join the Maneuver Dominance team at our Costa Mesa HQ. We are developing a hybrid-electric tiltrotor autonomous aircraft in partnership with a leading advanced air mobility company — Anduril owns the mission system, our partner owns the air vehicle. We need an Air Vehicle Lead to own the technical execution at the co-development interface: ensuring the aircraft our partner builds is optimized for autonomous military missions.

Requirements

• 8+ years in rotorcraft, tiltrotor, or VTOL vehicle engineering at the subsystem or vehicle level
• Deep understanding of VTOL flight mechanics (hover, transition, cruise) and how they constrain vehicle design
• Experience owning or negotiating technical interfaces (ICDs, power budgets, TPMs) across an organizational boundary with an external partner
• Hybrid-electric or electric propulsion architecture familiarity
• Technical project management — driving execution across multiple teams, managing design milestones, and maintaining schedule accountability in a co-development environment
• Requirements engineering — decomposition, baseline management, change control
• Ability to operate with influence rather than direct authority — technical credibility as the primary tool
• Willingness to travel ~20% (partner sites, UK, test locations)
• Must be able to obtain and maintain a U.S. Security Clearance

Nice To Haves

• Tiltrotor-specific experience (V-22, AW609, or eVTOL tiltrotor programs)
• Airworthiness and certification exposure (Part 27, SC-VTOL, SORA/SAIL, or MIL-HDBK-516C)
• Flight test planning and envelope expansion support
• Advanced rotor technology familiarity (variable-speed, optimized-speed concepts)
• Autonomous systems integration understanding — how AV design affects autonomy performance
• Production transition experience (development prototype to production-representative)
• UK MoD / allied certification frameworks
• eVTOL industry experience

Responsibilities

• Own the Air Vehicle System Design Document (SDD) — maintain, evolve, and enforce the design baseline that drives our partner's air vehicle from Anduril's mission needs
• Represent Anduril in partner vehicle engineering design reviews — advocate for military mission requirements (payload, power, survivability, flight performance)
• Support the CE in defining ICDs and manage the full co-development technical interface: space claims, power/thermal budgets, structural provisions, flight envelope allocations
• Drive air vehicle configuration decisions that affect mission capability — payload bay geometry, antenna placement, sensor structural provisions, power architecture
• Own TPM management across the air vehicle interface — track verification closure, manage open technical risks
• Coordinate vehicle-level architecture decisions from Anduril's perspective — balancing acoustic signature, cruise speed, payload capacity, and certification timeline
• Work with our partner to provide simulation models and support operational analysis teams in mission trades
• Plan capability increments and mission system integration phasing — define the path from early flight to full mission capability
• Support TEMP buildout, design milestones, and flight test planning
• Own the air vehicle certification strategy interface — coordinate Anduril's military airworthiness approach with partner's commercial certification
• Drive cross-team execution — pull together efforts from both Anduril and partner engineering to maintain schedule and resolve integration issues
• Drive the development-to-production configuration evolution to ensure production air vehicle accommodates full military mission system

Benefits

• Highly competitive equity grants are included in the majority of full time offers; and are considered part of Anduril's total compensation package.
• top-tier benefits for full-time employees

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed