Sr. Program Manager (UAE)

ABOUT THE TEAM

Anduril is seeking a Sr. Program Manager to be one of the first on the ground for the Maneuver Dominance team in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Omen is Anduril’s hover-to-cruise autonomous air vehicle (AAV) that packs the endurance, payload, and mission flexibility of much larger airplanes into a novel runway-independent Group 3 platform. Omen can operate from ship decks, beaches, or remote island clearings, providing true runway independence and freedom of maneuver across defense and civilian domains. Omen is the first tail-sitter aircraft with a mass-production contract, with an order of 50 systems representing a decisive investment that anchors production and accelerates the development of future systems.

ABOUT THE JOB

As the UAE Sr. Program Manager you will play a critical role in balancing innovation and practical execution across the Omen program. In this position, you will be deeply intertwined in a highly complex global program, driving strategic decision making, evaluating program milestones, and managing appropriate resourcing in country. You will be required to learn technical concepts and employ them quickly. You will be expected to use your technical knowledge in conjunction with your program management skills to lead cross-functional efforts and drive major program impact.

Deploying our Maneuver Dominance capabilities requires thorough understanding of mission requirements, thoughtful orchestration between Anduril teams and external stakeholders, and meticulous planning in the face of ambiguity. You thrive in the unknown and create order out of the chaos. You will be supporting and collaborating with the Omen lead Program Manager based in Costa Mesa, HQ across Air Vehicle, Mission Systems, Support Systems, and Production Systems.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Stakeholder Engagement: Build and maintain relationships with internal stakeholders, external clients, and industry partners to gather insights, align objectives, and secure buy-in for strategic initiatives. Act as the local liaison for UAE relationships, including subsystem suppliers, in-country test organizations, establishment of facilities, and coordination of customer engagements. Communicate internally the outputs of these efforts including cost forecasts, schedule, resource requirements, risks, and opportunities.
• Enable Cross Team Collaboration: Manage, unblock, and accelerate cross-team projects spanning multiple teams and initiatives. Collaborate closely with leads to ensure vision alignment and seamless execution through development and into production, including test operations.
• Technical Ownership: Drive technical outcomes through meticulous understanding of system performance, managing risks and opportunities with the Engineering leads, using metrics to derive insights into areas for improvement, quantifying the improvements made through investment in those areas, and maintaining a clear understanding of the state of the system that can be communicated to the customer.
• Execute Autonomously: Autonomously execute on broad and/or ambiguous requirements from external clients. Demonstrate high ownership on all pieces of work. Become a trusted partner to Anduril’s engineers.
• Shape Growth Opportunities: Support the drafting of technical proposals, ensuring that potential projects and scaling opportunities are accurately scoped, estimated, and aligned with the organization's capabilities and strategic goals.
• Strategic Planning & Execution: Translate strategic business goals into actionable project plans, setting clear milestones, and driving initiatives from conception through to successful completion, ensuring they deliver intended outcomes and add value to the business. Oversee the UAE allocation of personnel, budget, and other resources to ensure successful execution of these initiatives.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 8+ year of experience in a customer-facing program management role and/or systems engineering experience, preferably in the defense, national security, or aerospace domains
• Proven experience leading a technical team of peers to field hardware or software products to real operating environments through the product development lifecycle including test
• Proven experience leading a product and manufacturing team of peers through initial low rate production
• Solid technical aptitude and demonstrated individual contributions to technical designs, software development lifecycle, challenges and risks; ability to work closely and effectively with engineering teams
• Ability to work with internal and external stakeholders, across a wide range of technical comfort and at all levels
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills
• Strong technical, analytical and quantitative skills with the ability to use data and metrics to back up assumptions, recommendations and drive decisions
• Must have the ability to work through ambiguity, roll up your sleeves attitude, and drive forward progress
• Experience working with international suppliers and customers
• Must be able to obtain a Secret Clearance
• Must be able to travel up to 50% of the time

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor of Science degree in engineering, computer science, or related field preferred
• Experience defining new facilities or manufacturing spaces
• Experience with tools like JIRA and Confluence