Senior Software Engineer, RAIL

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 Robot Autonomy Interface Layer (RAIL) team bridges the gap between low-level hardware and advanced AI-driven behaviors at Anduril. We believe that taking a platform approach in an industry that historically has shared very little software between products is a critical piece of Anduril’s competitive advantage.

RAIL has two primary customers:

1. Mission Autonomy (MA) — Mission Autonomy at Anduril is responsible for coordinating mission-level behaviors by manipulating hardware. For example, “fly to these waypoints,” “enter radio silence mode,” or “arm munitions.”
2. Robotics Business Lines — These teams own specific Anduril robots end-to-end, as well as individual pieces of hardware on those robots.

RAIL bridges the gap between Mission Autonomy and diverse sets of hardware by creating common hardware interfaces to allow Anduril to effortlessly integrate with new hardware. RAIL enables Anduril to scale and deploy ambitious new robot designs on short timelines by leveraging learnings and investments from our existing portfolio of diverse hardware and products.

For example, Anduril procures autopilots from a multitude of different hardware vendors. Each autopilot has a subtly different hardware interface — some use MAVLINK, some use STANAG, others use bespoke vendor-specific serial interfaces. Despite having different interfaces, they all provide standard functionality that flies along a set of waypoints.

As an author of advanced mission behavior, I shouldn’t care whether my autopilot speaks MAVLINK or STANAG — I just want my vehicle to get flying. RAIL abstracts away these subtle hardware differences from Mission Autonomy by providing a shared, common interface as a layer between Mission Autonomy and low-level hardware integrations. RAIL also provides other valuable features such as hardware custody management and access-control semantics, shared-memory IPC approaches and flexible observability plugins, to name a few.

RAIL is uniquely situated within Anduril. As the layer between Mission Autonomy and low-level-hardware at Anduril, you will find yourself developing a broad set of expertise working with nearly every robotics team at Anduril. To date, we’ve flown all across our US offices and test sites to launch new initiatives with Ghost, Altius, Dive, and Fury. Come help RAIL build the future of robot autonomy at Anduril!

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Own major feature development and rollout of large features for our products — RAIL works with nearly every robotics team at Anduril — humility, empathy, and strong collaboration skills are key to success on the RAIL team!
• Write and maintain core systems that all robotics platforms at Anduril will use.
• Work closely with our vehicle software teams during product development, understanding their needs, and delivering high leverage software they are able to use to bring their product to market.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 4+ years of C++ or Rust experience in a Linux development environment — you will be expected to learn Rust on the job, but prior Rust experience is not required
• BS in Robotics, Computer Science, Mechatronics, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field
• Proven understanding of data structures, algorithms, concurrency, and code optimization
• Experience troubleshooting and analyzing remotely deployed software systems
• Experience working with and testing electrical and mechanical systems
• Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Secret security clearance

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience programming for embedded and physical devices
• Eligible to obtain and hold a US DoD Security Clearance
• Python and/or Go experience
• Multi-agent coordination of UAVs

US Salary Range: $168,000 - $252,000 USD

The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations. Highly competitive equity grants are included in the majority of full time offers; and are considered part of Anduril's total compensation package. Additionally, Anduril offers top-tier benefits for full-time employees, including:

• Platinum Healthcare Benefits: For U.S. roles, we offer comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans at little to no cost to you.
• Basic Life/AD&D and long-term disability insurance 100% covered by Anduril, plus the option to purchase additional life insurance for you and your dependents.
• Extremely generous company holiday calendar including a holiday hiatus in December, and highly competitive PTO plans.
• 16 weeks of paid Caregiver & Wellness Leave to care for a family member, bond with your baby, or tend to your own medical condition.
• Family Planning & Parenting Support: Fertility (e.g., IVF, preservation), adoption, and gestational carrier coverage with additional benefits and resources to provide support from planning to parenting.
• Mental Health Resources: We provide free mental health resources 24/7 including therapy, life coaching, and more. Additional work-life services, such as free legal and financial support, available to you as well.
• A professional development stipend is available to all Andurilians.
• Daily Meals and Provisions: For many of our offices this means breakfast, lunch and fully stocked micro-kitchens.
• Company-funded commuter benefits available based on your region.
• Relocation assistance (depending on role eligibility).
• 401(k) retirement savings plan - both a traditional and Roth 401(k). (US roles only)

Anduril is an equal-opportunity employer committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. The Anduril team is made up of incredibly talented and unique individuals, who together are disrupting industry norms by creating new paths towards the future of defense technology. All qualified applicants will be treated with respect and receive equal consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, uniform service, Veteran status, age, or any other protected characteristic per federal, state, or local law, including those with a criminal history, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws.