Winter 2027 Research Engineer Co-op

Anduril • Santa Ana, CA

11h • Onsite

About The Position

Maritime Digital Production is the software and digital systems function within Anduril's Heavy Metal division. It builds and deploys the technology stack for Anduril's shipbuilding factories, including real-time data infrastructure, manufacturing execution systems, production scheduling, and AI systems. The group works across Operational Technology and Information Technology, validating solutions with production operators, hardening them for reliability and security, and scaling them across sites. The environment is fast-paced and directly tied to production outcomes.

The co-op will improve a computational geometry engine that analyzes 3D CAD assemblies to determine feasible disassembly and build sequences. The engine identifies part contacts, constructs directional blocking graphs, searches for collision-free removal directions, and produces precedence constraints for production scheduling. It currently supports small and mid-sized assemblies and needs to scale to assemblies with hundreds or thousands of parts. The work combines algorithms engineering and research-oriented problem solving, with the goal of substantially improving performance while preserving exact output equivalence.

The role is an in-person co-op in Santa Ana, California, for winter 2027. The co-op will have a defined project and work daily with a named engineer.

Requirements

• Be pursuing a master's degree or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or a related field.
• Return to school after the internship to continue academic studies for at least one quarter or semester.
• Be a U.S. Person because of required access to U.S. export-controlled information or facilities; U.S. clearance eligibility may be required depending on the program.
• Be able to complete an in-person co-op in Santa Ana, California, in winter 2027.

Nice To Haves

• Strong modern C++, C++17 or later, including experience writing and debugging performance-sensitive C++ in a codebase not personally authored.
• Solid algorithms and data structures knowledge, including graph algorithms such as strongly connected components and topological ordering, combinatorial search and pruning, and complexity analysis.
• Computational geometry fundamentals, including triangle meshes, bounding volume hierarchies and other spatial indexes, intersection and collision tests, and reasoning about directions on the sphere.
• Experience profiling and optimizing code, with demonstrated measurable performance improvements.
• Research or coursework in assembly sequence planning, disassembly planning, or motion planning.
• Knowledge of non-directional blocking graphs, or familiarity with Wilson and Latombe or the STAAT work by Romney and colleagues.
• Publications at ICRA, IROS, RSS, SoCG, or Solid and Physical Modeling, or in the Computer-Aided Design journal.
• Experience with Eigen, OpenCASCADE, OpenVDB, CGAL, or a collision or bounding volume hierarchy library.
• Parallel programming in C++ with Intel TBB, OpenMP, or standard threads, with attention to determinism.
• Familiarity with CAD data, including boundary representations versus tessellated meshes and formats such as STEP and JT.
• Experience with CMake, GoogleTest, and reproducible builds; Nix is a plus.
• Python for tooling and analysis, such as NumPy and trimesh.
• Familiarity with infinitesimal motion analysis or rotational motions in assembly planning.

Responsibilities

• Profile a C++ computational geometry pipeline on real assemblies and report where time and memory are spent.
• Design and implement algorithmic improvements to disassembly-sequence search, including candidate ordering, pruning, memoization, and incremental graph updates.
• Decompose large assemblies into independently solvable subassemblies.
• Parallelize expensive geometric tests across cores while preserving determinism.
• Build a benchmark corpus and harness that run in continuous integration and catch regressions.
• Require output equivalence against a reference set for every optimization.
• Write up results and present them to the engineering team.

Benefits

• The posting says Anduril offers top-tier benefits for full-time employees, including a comprehensive, competitive benefits package available at little to no cost to employees.
• Highly competitive equity grants are included in the majority of full-time offers and are considered part of total compensation.

What This Job Offers

• Career Level: Intern