Principal Engineer, cUAS Lead, Omen

Anduril • Costa Mesa, CA

6d • Onsite

About The Position

The Maneuver Dominance team at Anduril develops operationally relevant, multi-asset autonomy. Omen is Anduril’s hover-to-cruise autonomous air vehicle (AAV) that packs the endurance, payload, and mission flexibility of much larger airplanes into a novel runway-independent Group 3 platform. Omen can operate from ship decks, beaches, or remote island clearings, providing true runway independence and freedom of maneuver across defense and civilian domains. Omen is the first tail-sitter aircraft with a mass-production contract, with an order of 50 systems representing a decisive investment that anchors production and accelerates the development of future systems. Small drones are hard to hit. Hitting them from a moving aircraft is harder. We need a Principal Engineer to own Omen’s airborne counter-UAS effector payload end to end, and to build the team around it.

Requirements

• 10+ years designing electromechanical hardware, including at least one product you carried from concept to production
• Strong engineering background, ideally in Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics, Aerospace, or Electrical Engineering
• Experience leading multidisciplinary teams, including hiring
• Deep mechanical design capability: structures under high transient loads, precision mechanisms, tolerance stack-ups, and joint design
• Experience sizing actuators for precision pointing, and a working grasp of the control bandwidth tradeoffs that come with it
• Experience with vibration and shock isolation, including isolator selection and the dynamic analysis behind it
• Experience selecting and characterizing ranging sensors. Radar, lidar, EO/IR, or laser rangefinders
• Hands-on test experience, from rig design and instrumentation through the data analysis that closes a design question
• Experience taking hardware to production: DFM, supplier engagement, first article inspection, acceptance test
• Proficiency in CAD (NX, SolidWorks, or equivalent)
• Ability to travel about 25% with potential surges for test and demonstration events
• Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Secret security clearance

Nice To Haves

• Direct experience with weapon, effector, launcher, or ordnance-adjacent systems, including safe and arm design
• Counter-UAS experience, whether engagement chains, fire control, or targeting small unmanned aircraft
• VTOL, tail-sitter, or rotorcraft experience, and familiarity with the payload environment they create (vibration, EMI, rotor wash)
• Experience with stabilized pointing, gimbals, boresighting, or targeting chains
• Familiarity with fire control, including lead and ballistic solutions and sensor-to-effector latency
• Environmental qualification testing (MIL-STD-810, MIL-STD-461)
• Airworthiness experience with external stores
• MATLAB/Simulink, multibody dynamics, or FEA for transient structural loads
• Familiarity with ITAR/EAR as it applies to effector development
• C++ or Python for test automation and data analysis

Responsibilities

• Own the counter-UAS effector payload end to end, from first prototype to qualified production hardware.
• Design the effector and firing system. Mounting structure, recoil and impulse management, feed and cycling, safe and arm interlocks.
• Own the steering hardware. Size the actuators, gearing, and drives, and design the isolation that protects the airframe from firing loads and the effector from rotor wash.
• Hold the pointing error budget and know where every part of it goes.
• Select and evaluate the sensors that range and locate the target. Bench and flight characterization for range accuracy, latency, and track quality against small targets in clutter.
• Build and lead the team. Hire across mechanical, electrical, firmware, and test, set the technical bar, and establish how the team works.
• Set the payload roadmap, balancing near-term demonstrations against the architecture that has to carry into production.
• Own payload interface control with the vehicle and mission system teams. Mounting and alignment, power and signal definitions, harnessing, time sync.
• Plan and run ground and flight test campaigns, including live range events, and lead the root-cause work when results do not match prediction.
• Take it to production. Design for manufacturability, tolerance and reliability analysis, supplier selection, first article, acceptance test.
• Work safety and compliance on safe and arm architecture, range safety, and export control.

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: Principal
• Education Level: No Education Listed