Chief Engineer, Air Defense, Middle East Programs

Anduril • Seattle, AL

44d • Onsite

About The Position

Anduril's Air Defense team develops, integrates, and fields autonomous systems that find, track, and defeat threats in the sky while keeping operators in control of engagement decisions. The team brings together Roadrunner, Sentry, Anvil, Pulsar, and Wisp with existing and third-party sensors and effectors through Lattice, creating a software-enabled family of systems for the modern battlespace. As control of the air becomes more contested, these networked capabilities give warfighters the awareness and response options needed to protect forces against rapidly evolving UAS threats. Anduril is fielding integrated air defense in the Middle East. As the single named technical authority, you own the architecture and technical performance of Anduril's sensors and effectors, the partner and customer-furnished systems we integrate, the networks that connect them, and the sustainment posture that keeps each site running once it goes live thousands of miles from the nearest Anduril lab. You will work across direct commercial sales, foreign military sales executed jointly with primes and government program offices, and multi-site rollouts already at initial operating capability. Each carries different engineering consequences: localization requirements that reshape the technical baseline, integration scope that is negotiated rather than specified, and milestones that depend on third-party integrations landing on schedule. They draw on different parts of the same product line, and you maintain the technical picture and keep the answers consistent across them. You will spend real time forward because Middle East deployments aren't run from a desk, and the technical decisions that matter most are made next to the system with the operators who have to trust it.

Requirements

• Engineering, science, or other technical degree, or equivalent practical experience
• 10+ years of systems or engineering experience, with a track record of technical ownership on fielded systems
• End-to-end technical accountability for whether a delivered system actually worked in an operational environment, not only for producing its design artifacts
• Experience integrating third-party and customer-furnished hardware and software into a system you were accountable for
• Ability to carry technical authority across teams that do not report to you, and to brief senior technical leadership and external customers directly
• Ability to define a verification approach for a full program scope, negotiate requirements and acceptance with a customer, and write a credible basis of estimate
• Willingness to travel up to 50% of the year, with Middle East travel the majority of it
• Eligibility to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Secret security clearance

Nice To Haves

• Prior experience delivering to Middle East defense customers, with foreign military or civilian partners
• Foreign military sales or direct commercial sales engineering experience, including releasability, export, and in-country localization or offset requirements
• Depth in one or more of: radar and sensor integration, effector integration, air defense command and control, tactical networking, or cross-domain solutions
• Experience standing up sustainment for a system fielded OCONUS
• Arabic language skills

Responsibilities

• Serve as Chief Engineer for Air Defense's Middle East programs.
• Own system architecture, integration strategy, fielding readiness, and sustainment outcomes across every program in the portfolio.
• Set the technical baseline, chair design reviews, and make the technical decisions that keep schedules aligned with the engineering.
• Exercise this authority across engineers who don't report to you.
• Define interfaces to partner radars and effectors, customer-furnished equipment, legacy command and control being displaced, and third-party systems the customer has already bought.
• Negotiate integration scope directly with partner vendors and government program offices, then give Anduril a clear account of what integrates cleanly, what requires an engineering sprint, and what isn't technically ready.
• Own the engineering position in negotiations for foreign sales, including releasability and export posture, in-country localization and production content, sustainment concepts, and technical terms negotiated into the contract before design begins.
• Write the basis of estimate that supports foreign sales engineering positions.
• Deploy to the region, work alongside operators and field service teams, and own technical performance in the field.
• Lead recovery efforts when a fielded site degrades, under time pressure and across a time zone gap, and feed learnings back into the product.
• Represent Anduril's engineering position to partner nation ministries, program offices, primes, and authorization authorities.
• Bring customer requirements and constraints back to Anduril.
• Translate customer-stated operational requirements into executable technical plans.
• Explain engineering constraints in terms a customer can act on.
• Shape the technical content of pursuits as the regional pipeline expands.
• Write credible estimates and flag any commitment that the engineering can't support.

Benefits

• Highly competitive equity grants
• Top-tier benefits for full-time employees
• Comprehensive, competitive benefits package (available at little to no cost to employees) ensures you’re supported in health, recovery, and whatever comes next.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Associate degree