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Lead Scientist, Strategic Defense

Anduril· AFS : Discovery Engineering : Discovery Engineering
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Washington, DC$253k - $336kFull-timePosted 3mo ago

About the role

Lead Scientist / Engineer role to define, architect, integrate, and validate Integrated Air and Missile Defense capabilities within Anduril's Strategic Defense business line. Hands-on senior technical contributor focused on fire control, dynamic sensor tasking, and end-to-end kill-chain architectures for IAMD systems.

Responsibilities

  • Lead system and mission architecture for end-to-end IAMD kill chains spanning sensing, track formation, identification, threat evaluation, weapon assignment, engagement planning, fire-control execution, and kill assessment.
  • Define and mature fire-control functionality, including engagement-quality track requirements, sensor-to-shooter interfaces, weapon-control integration, timing and latency budgets, safety constraints, and engagement-sequence logic.
  • Develop dynamic sensor-tasking approaches that allocate and coordinate distributed sensors based on threat priority, track quality, geometry, resource availability, defended-asset priorities, and anticipated engagement needs.
  • Translate operational concepts, threat scenarios, and customer needs into testable system requirements, behaviors, interfaces, and performance measures.
  • Decompose mission objectives into subsystem requirements and maintain traceability from operational need through architecture, implementation, verification, and validation.
  • Perform and review technical analyses involving detection and tracking performance, sensor coverage, track quality, discrimination, system latency, raid handling, resource allocation, engagement timelines, and probability of mission success.
  • Build and use modeling and simulation environments to evaluate architectures, algorithms, sensor and effector pairings, system-of-systems behavior, and mission performance against representative threat sets.
  • Work directly with software engineers to implement battle-management, fire-control, sensor-management, track-management, and decision-support capabilities.
  • Integrate government-furnished, commercial, allied, and Anduril sensors and effectors through well-defined interfaces and open-system architectures.
  • Plan and execute software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, laboratory, range, flight, and live-fire integration and test activities.
  • Diagnose system behavior using logs, telemetry, test data, and quantitative analysis; identify root causes and drive technical issues to closure.
  • Develop engineering artifacts such as system architectures, interface definitions, requirements, sequence diagrams, state machines, trade studies, test plans, safety analyses, and verification evidence.
  • Engage directly with operational users, government technical organizations, program offices, laboratories, and industry partners to resolve technical issues and shape deployable solutions.
  • Provide technical leadership and mentorship while remaining personally involved in engineering analysis, design reviews, integration, and test.
  • Support field demonstrations, exercises, and deployments, including travel to customer and test locations as required.

Qualifications

  • 10–15 years of relevant engineering experience developing, integrating, testing, or fielding complex defense, aerospace, radar, missile, weapon, battle-management, or command-and-control systems.
  • Hands-on technical work in systems engineering, software engineering, controls, electrical engineering, aerospace engineering, radar engineering, modeling and simulation, integration and test, or related discipline.
  • Experience with fire-control systems or engagement chains (e.g., engagement-quality tracks, weapon assignment, engagement planning, sensor-to-shooter integration, fire-control interfaces, timing and latency, weapon-control functions, safety interlocks, engagement testing).
  • Sensor tasking or sensor resource management experience (task planning, revisit scheduling, search and track allocation, track-quality management, multi-sensor coordination, closed-loop tasking).
  • Working knowledge of IAMD missions and threats (cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, hypersonic threats, fixed-wing and rotorcraft, and other airborne threats).
  • Experience developing and analyzing end-to-end system architectures integrating multiple sensors, C2 nodes, fire-control, networks, and effectors.
  • Translating operational needs into technical requirements, architectures, interface definitions, and verification plans.
  • Experience with sensor fusion, tracking, battle management, mission planning, resource allocation, or real-time decision systems.
  • Quantitative engineering trades and performance analysis using Python, MATLAB/Simulink, C++, or equivalent.
  • Integrating and testing complex hardware/software systems in lab, field, range, or operational environments.
  • Strong systems engineering practices across lifecycle: requirements, interface control, architecture, integration, verification, validation, risk management.
  • Clear communication across software, hardware, test, operations, and customer teams; ability to contribute from detailed technical discussions to senior design reviews.
  • Bachelor’s degree in engineering, computer science, physics, mathematics, or related field.
  • Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance.

Skills

Required:System architecture and requirements tracingFire-control systems and engagement chainsSensor tasking and resource managementModeling and simulation

Benefits

  • Top-tier benefits for full-time employees, including comprehensive coverage for health, recovery, and future planning.
Last updated Sep 9, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Anduril

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