Director, Material Movement & Production Supply

Anduril Industries · Costa Mesa, CA

Level: Director+
Team: Production
Travel: 25%
Degree: Required
Experience asked: 15+ years
Industry: Aerospace & defense
Posted: 15 days ago

The role in 30 seconds

A director-level production role at Anduril Industries (aerospace & defense) in Costa Mesa, CA. As Anduril adds production lines and new buildings, warehouse capacity limits how fast each new product can ramp.

They ask for: 15+ years · degree required
Tools it names: Kaizen, Kanban, Root cause, Automation
Day to day: about 25% travel

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+)

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.

Stands out: this posting asks for Kaizen, Kanban, which few similar roles mention. If you have it, lead with it.

It asks for 15+ years. If you're close, apply anyway: requirements are a wish list. Talk to someone doing this work there first.

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
Send a short, curious note
One real question about their work. No favors yet. Each person gets a different note, written for this role.
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3
Turn a reply into a short call
Questions worth asking about this team:
- What does a normal week look like on your team?
- The posting says about 25% travel. Between which sites?
- How did you land the job? What stood out in your interviews?
4
Apply with someone vouching for you
If the call went well, ask whether they’d pass your résumé to the hiring manager. Send your résumé link, apply that day, and let them know.
5
Bring proof to the interview
One page of before-and-after numbers from projects you led: scrap, OEE, cycle time, cost. Plant managers hire on results.

This plant: Anduril Industries in Costa Mesa

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Full description from Anduril IndustriesAs posted on their careers site.Show

What you'll do

◆Run daily operations across our headquarters and Orange County sites: receiving, put away, storage, picking, kitting, line side delivery, and outbound shipping to other Anduril sites and to deployment.
◆Own the result production cares about most: zero line stoppages caused by material, with dock to stock, kit on time and line side fill rate held to the service levels agreed with each production team. Every miss gets an A3 with a root cause, a countermeasure, an owner and a date.
◆Run the operation from data. Build the daily view of labor, productivity by process, backlog and service level by site, pulled from the system rather than from spreadsheets, and use it to staff every shift.
◆Lead from the floor through daily Gemba walks, tier meetings at every site, and a steady pace of kaizen events that each target a measured problem.
◆Own safety and cost at every site you run: zero recordables as the standard, the operating budget for labor, overtime, supplies and equipment, and cost per unit handled reported monthly to Finance.
◆Hold transaction discipline and location control in every flow you run, so the counts run by our Inventory Control and Quality Assurance team find nothing to fix. Execute quality at the point of handling: receiving checks, damage prevention and segregation of nonconforming material.
◆Keep government furnished property and export controlled material segregated, serialized and traceable in every flow you run.
◆Hire, train and develop hourly associates and the supervisors who lead them. Manage labor to the productivity standards and staffing guidelines set for each process, and manage overtime and attrition against plan.
◆Launch the Long Beach campus: hire its leaders, write its standard work, and run it to the same measures as headquarters from the first shift.
◆Act as the first user of every new system and layout. Test warehouse system changes on the floor before they go live, and accept or reject layout and automation handovers from Material Flow Engineering.

Required qualifications

✓Bachelor's degree in supply chain, operations, industrial engineering, business or a related field, OR 15+ years of equivalent operations experience
✓12+ years of experience in fulfillment, distribution, 3PL or warehouse operations, including leadership of a high volume site
✓6+ years leading managers or supervisors across multiple shifts or sites, with 200+ hourly associates and full ownership of safety, labor and productivity results
✓Experience managing labor to engineered or measured productivity standards by process
✓Experience running warehouse operations on a warehouse management system
✓Must be able to work extended hours and/or weekends as needed to meet production milestones
✓Ability to travel up to 25% of the time
✓This position is based in Costa Mesa, CA and requires being onsite. Remote work not considered. Candidates outside the area must be willing to relocate to Costa Mesa, CA
✓U.S. Person status is required, as this position needs access to export controlled material and data

Preferred qualifications

✓Launched a new fulfillment, distribution or production supply site from pre opening through steady rate
✓Builds own analysis in SQL, Python or a BI tool
✓Experience supplying a manufacturing production line through kitting, kanban and line side replenishment
✓Aerospace, defense or regulated manufacturing experience, including custody of government furnished property
✓Led th

Show full description ↓

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 Global Material Movement team is responsible for every movement of material from a supplier's dock to the point of use on Anduril's production lines. We receive, inspect, store, count, kit and deliver the parts that build Anduril's products, and we hold custody of government property along the way. The team exists so that production never stops for material. As Anduril adds production lines and new buildings, warehouse capacity limits how fast each new product can ramp. Site Execution and Production Supply is the operating core of that team: the people, the floor and the daily results at Anduril's headquarters and Orange County facilities.

About the job

We are looking for a Director, Material Movement & Production Supply (internally known as Director, Warehousing Operations & Production Supply) to join our rapidly growing team in Costa Mesa, CA. In this role, you will be responsible for warehouse and production supply operations across our headquarters and Orange County facilities: receiving, put away, picking, kitting, line side delivery and outbound shipping. You will lead a team of managers and supervisors and several hundred hourly associates, and you will open a new campus in Long Beach. Government property and export controlled material stay in custody the whole way. This will require experience running high volume, multi site warehouse operations by the numbers: labor planned against demand, productivity measured by process, and every miss traced to a root cause. If you are someone who walks the floor before you read the dashboard, can launch a building and get it to rate quickly, and builds supervisors who run their shifts through standard work and continuous improvement, then this role is for you.