Program Chief Engineer

About the role

As a Program Chief Engineer you will be responsible for defining and driving the system's architecture, technical roadmap, and overall engineering excellence. You will lead a multi-disciplinary team of high-performing engineers, ensuring that the system meets stringent performance, reliability, and mission requirements in challenging maritime environments. This role combines strategic technical leadership with direct hands-on involvement in critical design and integration challenges. This is a highly visible and impactful role where your deep technical expertise, strategic thinking, and leadership will directly contribute to delivering transformative capabilities for national security.

Responsibilities

• Architectural Design Authority: Serve as the ultimate technical authority for the system architecture, design decisions, and critical trade-offs across all engineering disciplines (mechanical, electrical, software, autonomy, acoustics, materials).
• System Integration & Performance: Oversee the end-to-end development lifecycle, from requirements definition and conceptual design through detailed design, integration, test, and deployment.
• Test & Evaluation: Define and oversee the test and evaluation strategy, including acceptance criteria, test readiness reviews, and support to customer acceptance testing.
• Technical Problem Solving: Lead the resolution of complex technical challenges, acting as a hands-on expert and guiding teams through difficult design, integration, or operational issues.
• Technical Trade-offs: Drive build vs. buy decisions, manage technical debt, and balance speed of delivery against long-term system sustainability.
• Team Mentorship & Development: Provide technical mentorship, guidance, and critical review for engineering teams, fostering a culture of innovation, excellence, and rigorous problem-solving.
• Risk and Opportunity Management: Identify, assess, and mitigate technical risks throughout the program lifecycle, developing contingency plans and advising program leadership.
• Cross-Site Coordination: Collaborate closely with the US Chief Engineer counterpart to ensure technical alignment across program variants, share lessons learned, and maintain architectural consistency.
• Requirements Management: Ensure robust requirements decomposition, traceability, and verification plans are in place for all subsystems.
• Innovation & Research: Stay abreast of cutting-edge technologies, research, and industry trends relevant to autonomous underwater systems, incorporating best practices and innovative solutions.
• Required Qualifications
• Bachelor's, Master's, or Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Robotics, Computer Science, or a related technical discipline.
• 15+ years of experience in the design, development, integration, and deployment of complex autonomous systems.
• 5+ years of demonstrated experience as a Chief Engineer, Technical Director, Lead Architect, Engineering Fellow, or equivalent senior technical leadership role on a major hardware/software program.
• Proficiency in systems engineering principles, including requirements management, interface control, verification, and validation.
• Proven ability to lead and mentor highly technical, multi-disciplinary engineering teams.
• Exceptional communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences.
• Must be able to obtain and maintain an Australian National Security Clearance (NV2 or higher).
• Preferred Qualificati

Benefits

Additional Information

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. Anduril's family of systems is powered by Lattice OS, an AI-powered operating system that turns thousands of data streams into a realtime, 3D command and control center. 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.

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