VP Production, Mission Systems
Anduril Industries · Costa Mesa, CA
- Level
- Director+
- Team
- Production
- Degree
- Preferred
- Experience asked
- 15+ years
- Industry
- Aerospace & defense
- Posted
- 30+ days ago
The role in 30 seconds
A director-level production role at Anduril Industries (aerospace & defense) in Costa Mesa, CA.
- They ask for
- 15+ years · degree preferred
- Tools it names
- Lean, Six Sigma, Capacity planning
Read from the posting. The full description is below.
From the plant jobs report · week of October 19, 2026
Production Engineer roles in California: typical posted base $122k–$177k.
Median of the low and high ends of 37 live postings that list pay, out of 111 production engineer openings in California, read from manufacturers' own careers sites.
California plant jobs report →Pay by team and state →What moves pay →
How this role compares
Against 110 other live production postings in California.
- Base pay
- Not listed in this posting
- Experience asked
- More than usual (15+ vs 5+)
Typical $120k–$174k, from 31 postings that list pay.
Similar roles usually ask 5+ years.
Skills these teams ask for most
- ✓ New product launch 37%
- ✓ Lean 30%
- Root cause 27%
- Automation 24%
- Python 22%
- Team leadership 22%
✓ = this posting asks for it too. % = share of similar postings that mention it.
At a glance
Pulled from the posting text. If it's not listed here, the posting didn't say.
How to get in at this plant
Five moves over a week or two. The first one takes ten minutes.
- 1
Pick 2–3 people on the Production team at Anduril Industries
We found 2 people at this company and state: 1 in this kind of role, 1 leaders. Engineers who joined in the last year or two reply the most. See them ↓
- 2
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Turn a reply into a short call
Questions worth asking about this team:
- What does a normal week look like on your team?
- How did you land the job? What stood out in your interviews?
- 4
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- 5
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This plant: Anduril Industries in Costa Mesa
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Full description from Anduril IndustriesAs posted on their careers site.ShowHide
About the role
The Vice President, Production, Mission Systems provides strategic leadership and operational oversight for all production activities within Anduril's Mission Systems organization. Mission Systems is one of Anduril's fastest-growing divisions, spanning three core product areas: Imaging, Battlespace Awareness, and Electronic Warfare. The division builds advanced, differentiated hardware powered by Lattice OS, Anduril's AI-driven command and control operating system. Encompassing production planning, supply chain, manufacturing engineering, and manufacturing operations across a geographically distributed footprint including sites in Costa Mesa, Lexington, Boulder, Santa Barbara, Fort Collins, and Huntsville. This role will be responsible for production across multiple business lines and multiple facilities. The VP orchestrates a portfolio of production programs, making resource allocation tradeoffs, setting the Mission Systems production strategy, and owning Mission Systems' production P&L. This executive is responsible for driving operational excellence and production efficiency in the near term while building the production capabilities necessary to support Mission Systems' and the company's long-term business objectives.
Key responsibilities
- ◆Establish and provide strategic and operational leadership across multiple production facilities - ensuring consistency in quality, cost, and delivery performance across geographies
- ◆Lead and build the production capabilities of a portfolio of products, balancing investment, capacity, and talent allocation across product lines and production programs
- ◆Partner with R&D, sales, and engineering teams to lead new product introduction efforts across multiple emerging product lines, developing from scratch the production lines and processes necessary to meet our customers’
requirements
- ✓Drive division-level production strategy including facility footprint decisions, make-vs-buy analyses, capital deployment planning, and workforce sizing aligned to multi-year business forecasts. This person owns the division's production P&L
- ✓Establish the operational excellence framework and continuous improvement culture across the division, leveraging lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, or similar methodologies to reduce costs, improve yields, and increase throughput
- ✓Establish and monitor KPIs across safety, quality, delivery, schedule, and cost to ensure performance targets are met across multiple production sites, including international expansions
- ✓Build and develop a high-performing production organization through talent development and a strong culture of accountability
- ✓Support capital planning, budgeting, and resource allocation for production functions across the division
- ✓Ensure compliance with all regulatory, environmental, health, and safety
requirements
- ✓Lead capacity planning and footprint strategy, including evaluation of new facilities and/or manufacturing technologies
- ✓Serve as a member of the division's senior leadership team, contributing to division and corporate strategic planning; represent the production organization in executive, customer, and investor contexts as appropriate
- ✓Collaborate in a matrix environment with strong relationships and influence ability across multiple stakeholders across the business
- ✓Lead workforce and location strategy, including labor market analysis, site selection criteria, and workforce sizing, to support new line stand-ups and geographic expansion
Qualifications
- ✓Bachelor’s degree in engineering, Operations Management, or a related field; MBA or advanced degree preferred
- ✓15+ years of progressive manufacturing leadership experience, with at least 7-10 years in a senior or executive role overseeing organizations of 500+ employees; experience in a high- or hyper-growth environment
- ✓Proven track record of leading large, complex manufacturing operations across multiple sites or locations
- ✓Experience managing simultaneous product ramps across multiple facilities and scaling international manufacturing operations required
- ✓Experience across all 5 pillars of production: production planning, supply chain, manufacturing engineering, operations, and quality
- ✓Demonstrated ability to set and scale an operational excellence framework across a division, with deep expertise in lean manufacturing and continuous improvement
- ✓Prior experience managing large budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars and capital programs
- ✓Excellent leadership, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills
- ✓Experience in regulated industries (e.g., defense, automotive, aerospace, medical devices) a plus
- ✓Direct P&L ownership in a production environment with demonstrated ability to manage financial performance at division scale
- ✓Executive presence and sophisticated communication skills; proven ability to influence C-suite stakeholders, represent the production function externally, and shape corporate-level strategy
$252,000 — $382,000 USD
Show full description ↓Show less ↑
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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