Senior Manager Development Test

This position is looking for a highly motivated engineering leader in Hardware Test with emphasis in development test capabilities, environmental testing, structural testing, wind tunnel operations, and other specialized physical test disciplines. The right candidate will have a passion for creative, scalable, and effective problem solving and a strong distaste for slow, paper-heavy legacy aerospace processes. This person will work closely with Anduril’s program and product leadership, supporting a broad spectrum of hardware programs and partnering to solve hard problems in product development and qualification. Anduril is a rapidly growing company, and the right person for this role should thrive in a fast-paced environment with many competing priorities.

The Enterprise Test Capabilities team at Anduril provides centralized development test services across the full spectrum of products and business lines. Our team owns the physical test infrastructure, specialized labs, instrumentation, calibration programs, and capital equipment that enable product divisions to execute environmental, structural, wind tunnel, and other niche qualification and characterization campaigns. We translate ambiguous validation needs into executable test strategies and build the scalable processes and facilities that let Anduril test at startup speed with engineering rigor. If it involves physical development test, we own the capability. If you want your work to directly accelerate the products Anduril fields, this is the role.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the Enterprise Test Capabilities organization—a centralized engineering team of development test engineers, technicians, and technical leads—providing environmental, structural, wind tunnel, and other specialized test execution, instrumentation, data acquisition, and physical test infrastructure across Anduril’s product portfolio.
• Own and scale niche test capabilities (environmental qualification, structural loads and dynamics, wind tunnel characterization, and emerging disciplines) ensuring the organization can execute complex campaigns with speed and rigor as Anduril’s portfolio grows.
• Manage capital equipment, lab infrastructure, calibration processes, and shared test assets, including planning, prioritization, procurement, utilization, maintenance, and long-range capability road mapping—to keep pace with program demand.
• Drive the expansion of internal test capabilities, reducing dependency on external facilities and enabling faster design iteration, aerodynamic characterization, and product readiness.
• Partner with program and product leaders to translate system-level validation needs into executable test strategies, resource plans, instrumentation architectures, and risk-based test campaigns.
• Lead test architecture and readiness planning for complex hardware programs, including fixture strategy, data requirements, sensor selection, DAQ configuration, calibrated instrumentation, and post-test data review.
• Balance competing program priorities across a matrixed, high-growth environment by allocating scarce engineering talent, lab space, instrumentation, calibrated assets, and capital equipment against the highest business-impact work.
• Build scalable processes for test intake, prioritization, planning, execution, data delivery, calibration control, and lessons learned—replacing ad hoc “hero mode” execution with repeatable, high-velocity workflows.
• Establish operating mechanisms for resource tracking, lab capacity, equipment utilization, calibration status, schedule risk, and program support visibility to improve decision-making across leadership teams.
• Partner with vendors, third-party labs, facilities teams, and equipment suppliers to expand internal capability, execute capital projects and RFPs, and maintain execution independence where it matters.
• Develop technical leaders, engineers, and technicians through career ladders, leveling expectations, mentorship, hiring, organizational design, and performance management in a fast- scaling test organization.
• Serve as a senior technical escalation point for high-consequence development test issues, bringing cross-disciplinary experience in loads, dynamics, environmental testing, instrumentation, and systems engineering to diagnose failures and drive practical solutions.

Required Qualifications:

• 10+ years of progressive experience in test engineering, test operations, or related hardware development disciplines within defense, aerospace, or high-reliability industries.
• 5+ years of direct leadership and people-management experience, including building teams,
  managing technical leads, and scaling organizations.
• Deep hands-on experience in one or more of the following: environmental testing (thermal, vibration, shock), structural loads and dynamics testing, wind tunnel testing, or other specialized physical test disciplines.
• Demonstrated ability to manage capital equipment portfolios, lab infrastructure, calibration programs, and multi-million-dollar test budgets.
• Experience developing and executing test strategies for complex hardware systems from development through qualification.
• Energy and passion to work at a hyper-growth startup that is aggressively disrupting the defense industry and a firm belief in Anduril’s mission.
• Deep empathy towards your internal customers—the product divisions and design engineers who rely on your test infrastructure—strongly held opinions about how to deliver high-velocity testing services, and a strong distaste for “old aerospace” paper-heavy, slow, and siloed testing methodologies.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to translate complex physical validation requirements into executable, high-fidelity test solutions.
• Superb communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to manage competing divisional priorities and present technical risk, test readiness, and capability status to executive leadership and military customers.
• Strong people management skills with the ability to lead, coach, and scale engineers and technical leaders in a matrixed, fast-paced enterprise support environment.
• Active Top Secret (TS) security clearance. SCI eligibility preferred.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in aerospace engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a closely related engineering discipline.
• Experience standing up or significantly scaling shared services or centralized test organization.
• Background in instrumentation architecture, data acquisition systems, and sensor technologies.
• Familiarity with wind tunnel design, operation, and data analysis workflows.
• Experience with defense acquisition milestones, customer test demonstrations, and qualification review processes (MIL-STD-810, MIL-HDBK-516, DO-160, or equivalent).
• Proficiency with test data analysis tools (Python, MATLAB, LabVIEW) and engineering applications (Nastran/Patran, HyperWorks)