Senior Data Platform Engineer, Air Dominance & Strike

Anduril Industries · Costa Mesa, California, United States

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.

About the Team

The goal of Anduril’s Air Dominance and Strike Division is to fundamentally reshape the way future peer to peer conflicts are fought by developing next generation Collaborative Combat Aircraft (Fury), missiles such as RoadRunner and Barracuda, and the Mission Autonomy software that is the brain of these products.

We’re in a race to build these products at scale. We need resilience in our supply chain, accelerate our ramp to production, iterate on design and quality through our test program, and ensure we’re maximizing operational effectiveness in the field. The operations that support and accelerate the product. The AD&S Operations team is a small but mighty team of business builder-operators who enable the division to scale through hyper-growth while breaking as few things as possible.

About the Role

We are seeking a Senior Data Platform Engineer to design, build, and operate the foundational data infrastructure that powers the Air Dominance & Strike division. In this role, you will be the architect of a scalable, reliable, and easy-to-use platform that enables analytics engineers, data scientists, software engineers, flight test engineers, and field operators to build high-impact analyses and data-driven applications across the product lifecycle — from design and manufacturing through flight test and field operations.

You will combine deep expertise in data pipelines, cloud infrastructure, DevOps, and modern data systems to create a cohesive ecosystem that serves test data infrastructure, fleet management, production analytics, and more. Applying Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles will be key to ensuring the performance and availability of these critical systems, which operate in both commercial cloud and classified environments. You will collaborate closely with platform users — embedding with engineers to understand their workflows and remove friction — ensuring our data capabilities are a force multiplier for the entire division. Your ability to deploy and maintain these mission-critical solutions will be essential, with occasional travel required for real-world implementation and support.

What You’ll Do

  • Lead the design, development, and maintenance of a scalable, self-service data platform that serves as the foundation for analytics and data applications across the organization
  • Architect and manage the underlying cloud infrastructure using Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and CI/CD best practices to support the data platform
  • Design and implement solutions for multi-server data access in disconnected and intermittently-connected environments, including conflict resolution and merging on reconnect
  • Build robust ETL/ELT pipelines in Python (e.g., Polars) leveraging modern DAG-based orchestrators and parallelization techniques to process data
  • Implement agentic data processing workflows with strong guardrails, validation, and human-in-the-loop controls to ensure safe and reliable automation
  • Build ML-ready feature sets and deploy validated models into production in environments where data quality and integrity are paramount
  • Partner with and empower platform users — including analytics engineers, data scientists, and software engineers — by providing robust tooling, clear documentation, and a seamless developer experience
  • Apply SRE principles to ensure the data platform is highly available, performant, and observable — establishing SLOs, automating operational tasks, and leading incident response
  • Evolve the platform's architecture by evaluating and integrating new technologies from the modern data stack to meet the ever-changing needs of the business

Who You Are

  • 5+ years of experience in a combination of data platform engineering, cloud infrastructure, DevOps, or SRE roles
  • 5+ years experience in technical operating roles
  • Leader - You’re skilled in leading through influence and diving into the details yourself but also have experience in building high-performing teams
  • Strong communicator - Demonstrated aptitude for strategic partnerships and communication with (non-)technical Stakeholders
  • Hands-on experience building and maintaining platforms with key components of the modern data stack, such as data lakehouse technologies (e.g., Apache Iceberg), query engines (e.g., Trino/Presto, AWS Athena), transformation tools (e.g., dbt), and real-time stream & batch processing platforms (e.g., Apache Kafka, Apache Spark)
  • Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), particularly Terraform, for managing complex cloud environments (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP)
  • Strong proficiency in DevOps and software deployment practices, including containerization and orchestration (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes, Helm), GitOps & CI/CD tooling (e.g., ArgoCD, CircleCI), and observability/monitoring/APM platforms (e.g., Datadog, Grafana)
  • Procedural fluency in writing, debugging, profiling, testing, and maintaining performant Python and SQL code
  • Experience with data pipeline orchestration tooling (e.g., Flyte, Airflow, Dagster)
  • Experience writing code in another language (e.g., Go, Java, Scala, JavaScript/TypeScript)
  • Proof of delivery — you've owned a project end-to-end from ambiguity to delivered, scalable outcome
  • Strong communicator — demonstrated aptitude for strategic partnerships and communication with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
  • Engineering fundamentals — Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, or similar background
  • Exceptional problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, with the ability to architect robust technical solutions for ambiguous and dynamic platform requirements
  • Energized by business impact and a self-starter mindset: you'd rather build an imperfect solution quickly that is used by many people than a perfect solution that collects dust
  • Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) Secret Clearance or higher, and comfort operating in air-gapped, classified, and/or other highly constrained network environments

Preferred Qualifications

  • Exposure to enterprise data/ontology platforms (e.g., Palantir Foundry, Redshift, Looker, Tableau)
  • Experience setting up and managing infrastructure to support analytical workloads on-premises or in resource-constrained environments
  • Experience working with specialized data formats (e.g., MCAP, HDF5) common in domains like robotics, aerospace, and flight test
  • Experience with the Nix (dependency management & system configuration) ecosystem
  • Prior hardware, defense, aerospace, or intelligence domain experience
  • Extensive experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), particularly Terraform, for managing complex cloud environments (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP)
US Salary Range
$146,000—$194,000 USD

The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations. 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.

 

Protecting Yourself from Recruitment Scams

Anduril is committed to maintaining the integrity of our Talent acquisition process and the security of our candidates. We've observed a rise in sophisticated phishing and fraudulent schemes where individuals impersonate Anduril representatives, luring job seekers with false interviews or job offers. These scammers often attempt to extract payment or sensitive personal information.

To ensure your safety and help you navigate your job search with confidence, please keep the following critical points in mind:

  • No Financial Requests: Anduril will never solicit payment or demand personal financial details (such as banking information, credit card numbers, or social security numbers) at any stage of our hiring process. Our legitimate recruitment is entirely free for candidates.

  • Please always verify communications:
    • Direct from Anduril: If you receive an email from one of our recruiters, it will only come from an @anduril.com address.
    • Via Agency Partner: If contacted by a recruiting agency for an Anduril role, their email will clearly identify their agency. If you suspect any suspicious activity, please verify the agency's authenticity by reaching out to [email protected]. 

  • Exercise Caution with Unsolicited Outreach: If you receive any communication that appears suspicious, contains grammatical errors, or makes unusual requests, do not engage. Always confirm the sender's email domain is @anduril.com before providing any personal information or clicking on links.

  • What to Do If You Suspect Fraud: Should you encounter any questionable or fraudulent outreach claiming to be from Anduril, please report it immediately to [email protected]. Your proactive caution is invaluable in protecting your personal information and upholding the security and trustworthiness of our recruitment efforts.

 

Data Privacy

To view Anduril's candidate data privacy policy, please visit https://anduril.com/applicant-privacy-notice/. 

 

By submitting your application, you consent to Anduril Industries using a third-party service provider to conduct pre-employment risk, integrity, and due diligence screening and assessing potential risks as part of your application process. This third-party service provider provides risk-intelligence services that may include analysis of sanctions and watchlists, adverse media, public-record information, and other lawful open-source or commercial data sources. This third-party service provider does not act as a consumer reporting agency. Use of this provider helps to ensure compliance with applicable laws and protect technology, intellectual property, and organizational security.

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