Forward Deployed Production Lead

ABOUT THE TEAM

Forward Deployed Production is Anduril’s production strike team. We are a small, elite group embedded directly in Production — Anduril’s largest, fastest-growing organization responsible for procuring, manufacturing, and delivering hardware to warfighters. We exist because scaling a hardware company at Anduril’s pace creates problems that can’t be solved from a conference room. They have to be solved on the floor, at the supplier, in the system — wherever the constraint actually lives.

Think of us as Anduril’s equivalent of a rapid-response taskforce: a handful of high-output operators deployed against the highest-priority, hardest problems in Production. We report into Production leadership and are handed the problems that are too messy, too cross-functional, or too urgent for the normal operating rhythm to absorb. Our mandate is simple: deliver hardware on-time, with quality, at cost — and remove whatever stands in the way of that.

ABOUT THE JOB

You will be deployed against the most critical bottlenecks in Production — whether that’s a supplier who can’t hit rate, a manufacturing line that’s bleeding yield, a system that’s generating bad data, or a process that’s adding weeks to delivery. You go where the problem is, you diagnose it, and you fix it. You work across Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Planning, Quality, Test, and any other function that touches the critical path. You are equally comfortable in an ERP system and on a production floor.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Own problems end-to-end, from root cause to implemented fix. You will be handed ambiguous, urgent, messy situations with zero prescription on how to solve them. You define the problem, build the solution, and drive it to completion. If the idea of figuring it out from scratch does not excite you, this is not the role.
• Go to the floor. Go to the supplier. Go to the warehouse. This role requires physical presence where hardware is being built, tested, stored, and shipped. You will spend significant time on production floors, at supplier facilities, and in stockrooms — not in conference rooms theorizing about what might be happening.
• Attack cost and schedule relentlessly. Everything we do ladders up to shipping hardware on-time and at cost. You will own projects that directly reduce unit cost, eliminate schedule delays, improve yield, or increase throughput. You measure your impact in dollars saved, days recovered, and units shipped.
• Fix the systems, not just the symptoms. Anduril is a hardware business, and tracking hardware is messy. You will work at the intersection of physical operations and software systems — inventory management, asset tracking, MES, ERP, MRP — to ensure our tools and data infrastructure can keep pace with our growth. When a system is broken or a process is generating garbage data, you fix it.
• Drive decisions through data, fast. You will execute rapid, scrappy analyses to get answers on short timelines — then build more scalable solutions where warranted. You are fluent in Excel, SQL, or tools like Palantir Foundry, and you can pull data from business systems to create the insights that drive action.
• Wrangle stakeholders and drive accountability. You will lead cross-functional efforts spanning Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Engineering, Finance, Quality, and more. You run the meetings, you own the action items, you follow up relentlessly. If you don’t like being the person who drives a room full of people toward a decision, this is not the role.
• Provide structure to chaos. Hardware startups at scale are messy. You bring first-principles thinking, clear frameworks, and rigorous problem decomposition to situations where everyone else is overwhelmed. You translate ambiguity into action.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 3+ years of experience in manufacturing operations, production engineering, supply chain, management consulting, or another environment where you had to physically solve hard operational problems — not just analyze them from a distance.
• You have been on a factory floor. You understand how things are actually built, how supply chains actually work, and where things actually break down. Theoretical knowledge alone is not sufficient.
• You are fast. You bias toward action over analysis-paralysis. We’d rather pull you back than push you forward.
• You are self-directed to an extreme degree. You do not wait to be told what to do, what to prioritize, or how to solve a problem. You identify the highest-leverage thing you could be doing and you go do it.
• You are comfortable with hardware, physical systems, and the unglamorous details of how things get procured, manufactured, tested, and shipped.
• You have strong analytical chops. You think in numbers, data models, and root causes. You can build a model in Excel, pull data from an ERP, and turn it into a clear recommendation — quickly.
• You are relentless about follow-through. You don’t just identify problems — you fix them, verify the fix, and make sure they stay fixed.
• You are comfortable with high visibility. This role involves direct interaction with senior leadership and broad communication across the organization. Your work will be seen. That should motivate you, not intimidate you.
• You embrace feedback and own your weaknesses. The pace of this team means you will make mistakes. What matters is how fast you learn from them.
• Must be a U.S. Person due to required access to U.S. export-controlled information or facilities.