Head of Operations, EW

Anduril Industries • Costa Mesa, CA

6d • Onsite

About The Position

The Head of Operations owns the execution machinery of the EW business line. You lead the teams that plan, deliver, deploy, and sustain every EW product Anduril puts in the field. Your organization spans four functions — Technical Program Management, Program Management, Mission & Deployment Operations, and Sustainment Operations — and your job is to make them operate as a cohesive system that delivers capability to the warfighter on time, on budget, and at quality. This is not a coordination role. You own the outcome. When programs deliver, it's because your organization planned well, executed with discipline, and solved problems before they became crises. When programs struggle, you're the person accountable for understanding why and fixing it. You set the standards, build the teams, and drive the culture of execution across the entire EW portfolio.

Requirements

• 15+ years in program management, technical program management, or related operational leadership — at least 5 leading a multi-team organization
• Proven track record delivering complex defense or aerospace hardware/software programs through full lifecycle (development, production, fielding, sustainment)
• Experience building and scaling PM organizations — hiring, structuring, and developing teams of program professionals
• Deep understanding of program management fundamentals and the judgment to know when to apply rigor and when to move fast
• Experience managing a portfolio — not just one program, but multiple concurrent efforts with competing resource demands and interdependencies
• Strong customer relationships and experience managing government program offices, contracting officers, and operational end users
• Financial acumen — P&L awareness, EAC management, and ability to make resource decisions with budget implications
• Comfort operating at both strategic and tactical levels — setting three-year plans and unblocking this week's shipment
• Executive presence — ability to represent the EW business line to customers, senior leadership, and external stakeholders with credibility and authority
• Bias toward action, accountability, and transparency over process, consensus, and opacity

Nice To Haves

• Background in EW, radar, or electronic systems programs specifically
• Experience with rapid development and fielding — prototyping through production in compressed timelines
• Familiarity with DoD acquisition pathways — traditional (FAR/DFARS), middle tier, and non-traditional (OTA, DIU)
• Experience standing up deployment or sustainment operations from scratch
• Understanding of MOSA, DevSecOps, and agile hardware development approaches
• Experience with EVMS, earned value reporting, and government compliance for large programs
• PMP certification or equivalent (valued for the knowledge, not the credential)

Responsibilities

• Technical Program Management Oversight of TPMs managing complex development efforts across the EW portfolio (Pulsar, Polaris, Neutron, and emerging platforms)
• Technical schedule management — ensuring internal and external development projects and programs are planned with realistic timelines informed by engineering complexity, not just calendar dates
• Risk management as a discipline — not just tracking risks but actively driving mitigation and making risk-informed decisions at the portfolio level
• Integration of technical and programmatic perspectives — ensuring schedules, budgets, and plans reflect engineering reality
• Establishing TPM standards — how programs are run, what artifacts are maintained, what "good" looks like across the team
• Program Management Oversight of PMs managing cost, schedule, and contractual performance across active programs
• Customer-facing program execution — milestone delivery, CDRLs, reviews, and status reporting that meets or exceeds customer expectations
• Proposal and capture support — cost volumes, BOEs, schedules, and management approaches for new business
• Contract management — understanding terms, managing scope, and ensuring deliverables align with contractual obligations
• Portfolio-level visibility — providing leadership with accurate, honest, actionable status across all programs simultaneously
• Tight collaboration with growth and account management to expand program scope and transition to scaled delivery
• Mission & Deployment Operations Alignment of demand and supply planning, including prioritization and allocation, to achieve program requirements.
• Planning, logistics, and execution of EW system deployments to operational environments
• Coordination across engineering, production, customers, and field teams to ensure deployments succeed on schedule
• Deployment readiness reviews — ensuring systems, support equipment, documentation, and personnel are prepared before committing to a deployment date
• Continuous improvement of deployment processes — reducing cycle time, increasing predictability, and capturing lessons learned
• Developing tight feedback loops between field performance, program execution, and product development
• Scaling deployment operations as the portfolio grows from dozens of fielded systems to hundreds
• Operations & Sustainment (O&S) Sustainment planning and execution for fielded EW systems — spare parts, repairs, upgrades, and technical support
• O&S program management for large, multi-year sustainment contracts
• Field support coordination — ensuring deployed systems remain operational and customers have responsive support
• Sustainment metrics — availability, mean time to repair, supply chain health, and customer satisfaction
• Transition planning — designing sustainment approaches during development so systems are supportable from day one, not as an afterthought
• Leadership & Organization Building, scaling, and leading an organization of 20-50+ program managers, TPMs, deployment operators, and sustainment professionals
• Defining organizational structure as the portfolio grows — how to organize teams across functions, programs, and customers for maximum effectiveness
• Contribute to overall BL product and growth strategies
• Hiring and developing talent — building a bench of program leaders who can run increasingly complex programs independently
• Setting culture and standards — establishing what execution excellence means across all four functions and holding the team to it
• Resource allocation — assigning the right people to the right programs at the right time, and making hard tradeoff calls when demand exceeds capacity
• Career development — creating growth paths that retain top performers and develop the next generation of program leadership
• Cross-functional partnership — working with engineering, production, supply chain, finance, growth, and legal as peers to drive business outcomes
• Executive communication — providing the GM and senior leadership with portfolio-level insight that enables strategic decisions

Benefits

• Highly competitive equity grants are included in the majority of full time offers; and are considered part of Anduril's total compensation package.
• 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: Manager
• Education Level: No Education Listed