Director, CEO Office

Anduril • Costa Mesa, CA

19h • Hybrid

About The Position

Anduril Industries is a defense technology company with a mission to transform U.S. and allied military capabilities with advanced technology. By bringing the expertise, technology, and business model of the 21st century’s most innovative companies to the defense industry, Anduril is changing how military systems are designed, built and sold. As the world enters an era of strategic competition, Anduril is committed to bringing cutting-edge autonomy, AI, computer vision, sensor fusion, and networking technology to the military in months, not years. We are looking for an exceptional operator to lead day-to-day execution across the CEO’s highest-priority work. This is a senior operating leadership role for someone who can take ambiguous, high-stakes priorities and drive them from inception through execution with limited direction. You will build and lead a high-performing team and own the systems, preparation, coordination, and follow-through that allow the CEO and Chief of Staff to operate at maximum leverage. You will work across Anduril’s most senior leaders, functional teams, customers, government stakeholders, and external partners. The defining characteristic of the role is end-to-end ownership. You understand what outcome is needed, determine the path to get there, mobilize the right people, maintain a high quality bar, anticipate problems before they arise, and drive the work through completion. The strongest person in this role will not wait for work to be fully defined. You will identify what needs to happen, impose structure on ambiguous situations, anticipate issues before they become urgent, and independently drive work forward. You will know when to pull in the Chief of Staff or CEO and, equally importantly, when not to. You will build leverage through a team, not by becoming the single point through which every task must flow. That means developing people, establishing clear ownership, and creating systems that allow the function to absorb increasing scope. The strongest candidates combine exceptional judgment, high intellectual horsepower, relentless follow-through, and a very high operating tempo. They are comfortable moving between executive-level issues and detailed execution, can rapidly understand unfamiliar business problems, and know how to turn loosely defined priorities into concrete outcomes. Candidates who have operated alongside senior executives or principals in exceptionally demanding environments, including the Executive Branch, senior government leadership, high-growth technology companies, or other high-stakes operating environments, are strongly encouraged to apply.

Requirements

• Typically 8+ years of progressively increasing responsibility in roles requiring exceptional ownership, judgment, and execution.
• Demonstrated success taking ambiguous, high-stakes problems from a loosely defined starting point through successful execution with limited oversight.
• Exceptional executive judgment and a strong instinct for quality. You know what good looks like, can quickly separate signal from noise, and can raise the quality of work before it reaches senior leadership.
• Demonstrated ability to rapidly understand unfamiliar business problems, identify the core issue, and develop a practical path forward.
• Strong executive presence and credibility with senior leaders. You can challenge, influence, and drive executives while maintaining trust and strong working relationships.
• Demonstrated ability to lead through influence rather than authority, particularly across complex cross-functional organizations.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to synthesize complex information into concise executive-level materials.
• Direct people-management experience, including hiring, developing, and holding high-performing teams accountable.
• A record of building systems and operating mechanisms that allow a function to scale rather than relying on heroic individual effort.
• Extremely high ownership and follow-through. When you take responsibility for something, others trust that it will be driven through completion.
• Ability and willingness to operate at a very high tempo, travel frequently when required, and adapt quickly as priorities change.
• Ability to maintain discretion and sound judgment while working with highly sensitive company, government, personnel, and strategic information.
• Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Secret security clearance.
• This role will require reference checks.

Nice To Haves

• Experience as a Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of Staff, senior business operator, or leader within an executive office.
• Experience operating alongside the Executive Branch, senior government or military leadership, a CEO, or another senior principal in a high-stakes environment.
• Experience in a fast-growing technology, defense, aerospace, national security, or similarly complex organization.
• Experience in business operations, strategy and operations, corporate planning, finance, growth operations, product operations, or another cross-functional operating role.
• Experience driving complex domestic or international efforts involving senior government, commercial, or strategic stakeholders.
• A track record of repeatedly earning broader scope and responsibility based on performance.

Responsibilities

• Run the operating rhythm. Own the cadences, processes, forward planning, prioritization, and information flows that keep the team ahead of what is coming rather than reacting to it.
• Build and lead a high-performing team. Set a high bar, establish clear ownership/priorities/timelines, develop people, and build an organization capable of absorbing increasing scope under the Chief of Staff.
• Turn CEO priorities into executable work. Take loosely defined priorities or emerging issues, determine what needs to happen, identify the right owners and decision-makers, establish a plan, and drive the work to a conclusion.
• Lead high-priority special initiatives. Take ownership of ambiguous problems or opportunities that matter to the CEO but do not sit cleanly within one organization. Determine the objective, build the plan, assemble the right internal and external stakeholders, drive decisions, and carry the effort through execution.
• Drive senior stakeholders. Coordinate leaders across the company without relying on positional authority, resolve gaps between teams, surface disagreements early, and maintain momentum on issues that span organizational boundaries.
• Own executive preparation. Ensure important meetings, reviews, and engagements have clear objectives, strong materials, the right participants, surfaced decisions and risks, and sufficient preparation time for senior leadership.
• Own significant CEO travel and external engagements end-to-end. Through the team, coordinate objectives, stakeholders, scheduling, preparation, materials, logistics, and follow-through for major domestic and international trips.
• Run executive reviews, offsites, and special cadences. Establish timelines and outputs, coordinate contributors, maintain quality and version control, identify unresolved issues, capture decisions, and ensure actions are closed.
• Serve as a trusted filter and quality bar. Exercise judgment over what requires senior leadership attention, what can be resolved elsewhere, and whether work reaching the CEO is ready for decision or discussion.
• Maintain organizational follow-through. Ensure commitments made in CEO and senior leadership forums translate into clear owners, actions, and outcomes rather than disappearing after the meeting.
• Connect dots across the company. Recognize when an issue surfaced in one part of the business has implications elsewhere and proactively bring together the people and information required to address it.
• Continuously improve how the team operates. Identify friction, unnecessary work, unclear ownership, and recurring failure modes, then redesign the system rather than repeatedly solving the same problem.

Benefits

• Highly competitive equity grants are included in the majority of full time offers; and are considered part of Anduril's total compensation package.
• Additionally, Anduril offers top-tier benefits for full-time employees, including: Benefits At Anduril, we invest in our people. Our comprehensive, competitive benefits package (available at little to no cost to employees) ensures you’re supported in health, recovery, and whatever comes next. For more information, Explore Our Benefits .

What This Job Offers

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