Vendor Strategy & Performance Lead, Design & Construction

Anduril Industries • Costa Mesa, CA

5d

About The Position

The Design & Construction team at Anduril delivers the factories, labs, offices, and secure spaces that enable our teams to design, build, and deploy advanced defense technology. Our projects span high-performance manufacturing facilities, mission-critical secure environments, and collaborative workspaces, giving our team exposure to a uniquely wide variety of technical and operational challenges. More than just delivering buildings, we are (literally) rebuilding the American defense industrial base. Our work accelerates how quickly critical technology moves from concept to production and into the hands of the warfighter. The Capital Operations team sits within Design & Construction and provides the operating backbone that helps the organization scale. We build the processes, tools, governance, analytics, standards, and special initiatives that help our construction project teams deliver faster, more predictably, and with better outcomes. Our focus areas include Project Controls, Design Integration, Strategy & Operations, and Vendor Strategy. We are looking for a Vendor Strategy & Performance Lead to oversee our global construction vendor ecosystem. This person will partner closely with Construction Project Managers, Strategic Sourcing, Procurement, Legal, and others.

Requirements

• Minimum of 10 years of progressive experience in construction management, corporate real estate, owner’s representation, construction procurement, vendor management, commercial management, project controls, or a related field.
• Strong understanding of the construction project lifecycle, including design, preconstruction, procurement, construction, commissioning, closeout, and handover.
• Experience working with construction-related vendors such as general contractors, construction managers, architects, engineers, specialty consultants, owner’s reps, commissioning agents, inspectors, or technical trade partners.
• Ability to evaluate vendor capabilities, project teams, scopes of work, proposals, and commercial structures with practical construction judgment.
• Strong written communication skills, especially for scopes of work, vendor recommendations, executive summaries, process documents, and decision materials.
• Ability to operate cross-functionally with Construction Project Managers, Procurement, Strategic Sourcing, Legal, Finance, technical stakeholders, and senior leaders.
• Strong judgment and ownership; you can build a process where none exists, but you know when not to over-process a fast-moving project team.
• Ability to communicate clearly with external vendors while representing Anduril’s pace, standards, and expectations.
• Willingness to travel up to 10–20% of the time, depending on project and vendor needs.
• Must be a U.S. Person due to required access to U.S. export controlled information or facilities

Nice To Haves

• Experience with global or vendor ecosystems in the US, APAC, Europe, and Middle East is highly valued.

Responsibilities

• Develop Design & Construction’s vendor strategy across key project-delivery categories, including general contractors, construction managers, architects, engineers, owner’s reps, specialty consultants, commissioning agents, and more, ensuring comprehensive coverage across our global operating regions.
• Build and maintain a preferred vendor bench by geography (including the US, APAC, Europe, and the Middle East), project type, technical specialty, security need, scale, and performance history.
• Identify where Anduril should introduce new vendors to increase capacity, reduce risk, improve pricing tension, or access specialized capabilities.
• Establish a repeatable pre-qualification process for construction, design, consulting, and specialty partners across our global vendor ecosystem.
• Define practical evaluation criteria, including relevant experience, team quality, technical capability, cost competitiveness, schedule performance, safety, security requirements, financial stability, regional regulatory compliance, local market dynamics, and fit with Anduril’s pace.
• Build vendor evaluation templates, interview guides, reference-check approaches, and scoring models that are rigorous but not bureaucratic.
• Maintain a central record of vendor qualifications, strengths, risks, past performance, and recommended use cases.
• Support select request for proposal (RFP) engagements for major or strategically important vendor categories, spanning both domestic and international projects, in partnership with Strategic Sourcing, Procurement, Legal, Finance, and D&C leadership.
• Help write clear scopes of work (SOW) that reduce ambiguity, improve bid quality, and set vendors up to deliver the intended outcome.
• Review proposals for scope gaps, unclear assumptions, exclusions, staffing concerns, commercial risk, and operational feasibility.
• Provide D&C-side input into fee models, rate cards, reimbursables, staffing plans, change-management expectations, escalation paths, and performance requirements.
• Establish a vendor performance management rhythm for key D&C partners, including scorecards, business reviews, escalation paths, and action plans.
• Define practical KPIs across cost, schedule, quality, responsiveness, documentation, safety, change management, and issue resolution.
• Create a feedback loop so project-level experiences influence future vendor selection and contracting decisions.
• Track vendor concentration, capacity risk, geographic coverage, and recurring performance issues.
• Build executive-ready materials that communicate vendor performance, risks, recommendations, and decisions needed.

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