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Senior Product Operations Engineer, Space

Anduril Industries · Costa Mesa, CA

Level
Senior
Team
Production
Experience asked
5+ years
Industry
Aerospace & defense
Posted
Yesterday

The role in 30 seconds

A senior production role at Anduril Industries (aerospace & defense) in Costa Mesa, CA. Serve as a senior technical subject matter expert on a growing Product Operations team supporting a live, operational DoD system, helping set the standard for how the team operates, communicates, and solves problems.

They ask for
5+ years
Tools it names
Root cause, Automation, Tooling
Day to day
some off-shift / weekend coverage

Read from the posting. The full description is below.

From the plant jobs report · week of November 2, 2026

Production Engineer roles in California: typical posted base $134k–$180k.

Median of the low and high ends of 64 live postings that list pay, out of 151 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 150 other live production postings in California.

Base pay
Not listed in this posting

Typical $121k–$174k, from 50 postings that list pay.

Experience asked
Less than usual (5+ vs 6+)

Similar roles usually ask 6+ years.

Skills these teams ask for most

  • New product launch 37%
  • Lean 30%
  • ✓ Root cause 28%
  • ✓ Automation 25%
  • ✓ Team leadership 25%
  • ✓ Tooling 21%

✓ = this posting asks for it too. % = share of similar postings that mention it.

It asks for 5+ years. If you're close, apply anyway: requirements are a wish list. Talk to someone doing this work there first.

At a glance

Off-shift / weekend coverage

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. 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. 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.

    Write to Aaron → (free)
  3. 3

    Turn a reply into a short call

    Questions worth asking about this team:

    • What does a normal week look like on your team?
    • How does off-shift and weekend coverage work?
    • How did you land the job? What stood out in your interviews?
  4. 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. 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

179 other open roles at this site · 2 people we found in production roles at Anduril Industries.

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

What you'll do

  • ◆Serve as a senior technical subject matter expert on a growing Product Operations team supporting a live, operational DoD system, helping set the standard for how the team operates, communicates, and solves problems
  • ◆Stand up, harden, and maintain classified Linux-based infrastructure across globally distributed sites in air-gapped environments
  • ◆Apply and enforce STIG compliance and system hardening standards across all deployed environments this is not checkbox work, you will own the security posture
  • ◆Build, maintain, and evolve infrastructure as code using Ansible/Puppet automating provisioning, configuration management, and deployment pipelines
  • ◆Write and maintain operational tooling, automation scripts, and workflow optimizations in Bash and Python
  • ◆Architect and maintain comprehensive observability across the stack using Splunk/ELK/Open Search logging, alerting, and tracing for distributed systems
  • ◆Manage and operate containerized workloads in Kubernetes at scale in production, classified environments
  • ◆Provide real-time incident response, rapid root-cause analysis, and resolution of complex issues spanning application code and backing infrastructure
  • ◆Collaborate cross-functionally with Software Engineering, Mission Ops, and TPMs to validate operational readiness of new deployments, features, and integrations
  • ◆Provide 24x7 on-call support as part of a team supporting the Space Domain Awareness mission on behalf of the United States Space Force
  • ◆Drive continuous improvement proactive automation, system optimization, and process refinement with minimal supervision and strong judgment on when to escalate

Required qualifications

  • ✓Active U.S. Secret security clearance (non-negotiable must currently hold and be able to maintain- preferred TS/SCI clearance)
  • ✓5+ years of hands-on experience with Kubernetes in production environments deploying, scaling, debugging, and managing containerized workloads. This is core to the role, not adjacent.
  • ✓Expert-level Linux proficiency you live in the terminal, you understand the OS deeply (networking, filesystems, systemd, SELinux, kernel tuning) but this is an engineering and operations role, not a sysadmin role. You build and automate, not just maintain.
  • ✓Proven experience with STIG compliance and system hardening you've applied STIGs, remediated findings, and understand the "why" behind the controls, not just the checklist
  • ✓Strong experience standing up infrastructure in air-gapped/classified environments you understand the unique constraints and have operated in them
  • ✓Proficiency with Ansible Puppet and Terraform for building, managing, and versioning infrastructure as code at scale
  • ✓Strong scripting ability in Bash and Python writing production-grade automation, tooling, and operational scripts
  • ✓Hands-on experience with observability tooling Prometheus, Grafana, and ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) for monitoring, logging, alerting, and tracing distribut
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

Anduril's Space team is dedicated to expanding our AI-powered capabilities into the final frontier, enhancing Space Domain Awareness, Space Control, and Command and Control for U.S. military and allied partners. We're developing fully integrated hardware and software systems, including Lattice for Space Missions and modular payloads, to address growing threats in space and ensure our Guardians maintain a decisive advantage in this contested warfighting domain.

About the job

We are looking for a Senior Product Operations Engineer to join our Space team in Costa Mesa, CA someone who brings deep technical credibility and the leadership presence to match. This is not a management role, but it is a senior one: you'll be a technical anchor on a tight-knit team, the kind of engineer others look to when something breaks, when architecture decisions need to be made, and when the room needs someone who can cut through noise and drive clarity.

You will operate, maintain, harden, and evolve a classified networking capability that delivers operational Space Domain Awareness data for the United States Space Force. You'll own the reliability and security posture of globally distributed infrastructure in air-gapped environments standing up new sites, hardening systems to STIG compliance, building and maintaining infrastructure as code, and ensuring observability across the stack.

You'll work hand in hand with Mission Software Engineers, Product Operations teammates, Mission Operations Engineers, and Technical Program Managers to deploy new capabilities on operationally relevant timelines. You'll also be the connective tissue between engineering and the end-users at customer sites worldwide providing clear documentation, training remote staff, and serving as a first point of contact when issues arise.

This role is directly tied to an ongoing, funded program within Anduril’s Space Business Line. The program requires building and fielding a resilient, software-defined, distributed mesh networking layer for critical Space Domain Awareness data. We work with mission partners and operators to deploy reliable and robust capabilities on operationally-relevant fielding timelines to meet complex challenges across the DOD and IC.

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