Production Recruiter

About The Role

As a Production Recruiter on our team, you are more than just a talent partner; you are a critical member of the business, embedded directly within the Divisions that are scaling Anduril's manufacturing, supply chain, quality, and production operations capabilities. Your mission is to own the end-to-end hiring process for the production teams you support, acting as a trusted advisor to hiring managers and a master of your craft in one of the most competitive and specialized talent markets in defense technology.

You will operate within our innovative matrixed model, designed to give you the best of both worlds: deep immersion in divisional production strategy and expert functional mentorship. This means you will be aligned to a Divisional Production Recruiting Lead for your day-to-day priorities and business context, while reporting to a Functional Manager who will guide your long-term skill development and career growth. This unique structure ensures you are solving our most pressing production hiring challenges while becoming a true expert in your recruiting domain.

Production recruiting at Anduril is not like hiring software engineers. You are recruiting in markets where the best talent is employed at defense primes, working in cleared facilities, often not on LinkedIn, and making career decisions based on mission impact, site location, shift flexibility, and long-term program stability. Success in this role requires a differentiated sourcing approach, deep understanding of production org structures, and the ability to sell a high-growth defense technology environment to candidates who have spent decades at established primes.

What You'll Do

End-to-End Production Hiring Execution

• Own the full recruiting lifecycle for your assigned production roles — from sourcing and screening to offer negotiation and closing — ensuring a world-class candidate experience at every step.
• Develop and execute creative sourcing strategies tailored to production talent markets: manufacturing engineers, supply chain leaders, quality directors, production technicians, test engineers, and operations managers are not found through the same channels as software engineers.
• Build robust pipelines using differentiated approaches: industry conferences, trade associations, referral networks, SOBO campaigns, competitor mapping (defense primes, OEMs, contract manufacturers), and community-based sourcing for site-specific roles.
• Manage the interview process, including conducting initial screens, preparing candidates and interviewers, and facilitating debriefs to drive effective hiring decisions.
• Navigate production-specific closing dynamics: relocation to manufacturing sites, shift schedules, clearance timelines, comp benchmarking against primes, and career trajectory conversations for candidates moving from established programs to high-growth environments.

Embedded Business Partnership

• Partner closely with your assigned Divisional Production Recruiting Lead and hiring managers to deeply understand their production hiring needs, site dynamics, program milestones, and the technical bar for their teams.
• Act as a production talent advisor, using data and market insights to guide intake conversations, shape job descriptions, calibrate leveling, and set realistic expectations for role timelines given location and clearance requirements.
• Provide transparent, regular updates on pipeline health, search progress, and potential roadblocks to your business stakeholders — translating recruiting metrics into production business language (contract milestones, ramp timelines, site readiness).
• Develop deep understanding of production org structures: the difference between Manufacturing Engineering, Manufacturing Operations, Supply Chain, Quality, and Production Leadership — and how talent moves between these functions and across the industry.

Functional Craft & Collaboration

• Contribute to the Production Recruiting Center of Excellence by sharing best practices, market intelligence, comp data, and high-quality fungible candidates with your peers across divisions.
• Partner with your Functional Manager to develop production domain expertise, set development goals, and grow your career within the production recruiting specialization.
• Uphold data integrity in our recruiting systems (ATS/CRM) to ensure accurate reporting and analytics — your data powers the Division's visibility into hiring health.
• Build and maintain market intelligence on production talent: where candidates sit (by company, geography, clearance level), how they move, what motivates them, and what Anduril's value proposition is relative to the competition.

Who You Are

You are a driven, mission-oriented recruiter with a passion for finding and hiring exceptional production and operations talent. You thrive on being close to the manufacturing floor — understanding what gets built, how it gets built, and who the people are that make it happen. You are a natural collaborator, adept at building trust with production leaders who are often skeptical of recruiters, and skilled at navigating a fast-paced, multi-site environment where urgency is the norm.

Required Qualifications

• Years of experience commensurate with level:
• IC3 (Recruiter): 5+ years of full-cycle recruiting experience in a fast-paced environment, with meaningful exposure to production, manufacturing, or operations hiring.
• IC4 (Senior Recruiter): 8+ years of full-cycle recruiting experience, with demonstrated ability to independently manage complex production leadership searches and mentor junior team members.
• Proven experience sourcing and closing production talent in competitive markets — manufacturing engineers, supply chain professionals, quality leaders, or production operations roles.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to build rapport and trust with production hiring managers who value directness, domain knowledge, and results over recruiting process.
• A data-informed mindset, with experience using metrics (pipeline velocity, conversion rates, source effectiveness, time-to-fill) to guide your approach and track your impact.
• Ability to operate with a high sense of urgency and bias for action — production hiring is tied to contract milestones, site launches, and revenue timelines that don't wait.
• Comfort working across multiple sites and locations, understanding that production talent is geographically distributed and site-specific.

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct experience recruiting for manufacturing, production operations, supply chain, or quality roles in defense, aerospace, automotive, robotics, or advanced manufacturing industries.
• Experience recruiting for roles that require security clearances, with understanding of clearance timelines and their impact on candidate availability.
• Familiarity with production org structures and title progressions (Technician → Lead → Supervisor → Manager → Director → VP/Head of Production).
• Experience recruiting for new site launches, manufacturing ramps, or greenfield production facilities.
• A passion for the defense technology mission and genuine curiosity about how things get built at scale.
• Experience working in a matrixed or similarly complex organizational structure with dual reporting lines.
• Demonstrated ability to influence and guide hiring managers on best practices, market realities, and talent strategy trade-offs.