What is a DevOps Engineer at Anduril?

As a DevOps Engineer at Anduril, you are not just maintaining standard cloud infrastructure; you are the backbone of a company building the next generation of defense technology. Anduril operates at the intersection of aerospace, hardware, and artificial intelligence. Your work directly enables the rapid deployment of Lattice OS—the company’s core software platform—across cloud environments, secure government enclaves, and ruggedized edge devices deployed in austere environments.

The impact of this position is massive. You will build the deployment pipelines, infrastructure, and automation that allow software engineers to push updates to autonomous drones, sentry towers, and command centers reliably and securely. Because Anduril products must function in disconnected or highly constrained environments, the infrastructure challenges you will solve are far more complex than typical web-scale SaaS operations.

In this role, you will navigate a unique blend of massive cloud scale and strict edge-computing limitations. You will work closely with embedded engineers, AI researchers, and product teams to ensure that critical defense systems remain highly available, secure, and easily updatable. Expect a fast-paced, mission-driven environment where your technical decisions directly influence the safety and effectiveness of end-users in the field.

Getting Ready for Your Interviews

Preparation for an Anduril interview requires a shift in mindset. You must demonstrate not only deep technical competence but also a strong bias for action and an understanding of hardware-software integration.

Technical Depth and Systems Thinking – Interviewers will test your understanding of modern infrastructure, from the Linux kernel up to distributed systems. You must demonstrate how you design systems that are resilient, scalable, and capable of operating in non-traditional environments (like edge devices with intermittent connectivity).

Infrastructure as Code Mastery – Anduril relies heavily on automation to manage complex deployments across varied environments. You will be evaluated on your ability to write clean, modular, and heavily tested infrastructure code, as well as your familiarity with declarative system management.

Troubleshooting and First-Principles Problem Solving – When a deployment fails on a remote sensor tower, you cannot always SSH into it easily. Interviewers will assess how you isolate issues, debug complex distributed systems, and apply first-principles thinking to solve problems you have never encountered before.

Mission Alignment and Culture Fit – Anduril moves incredibly fast and tackles high-stakes defense problems. You will be evaluated on your ability to handle ambiguity, take extreme ownership of your systems, and communicate effectively across diverse engineering disciplines.

Interview Process Overview

The interview process for a DevOps Engineer at Anduril is rigorous, practical, and highly technical. It is designed to evaluate how you perform under realistic engineering constraints rather than testing you on abstract trivia. The process moves quickly, reflecting the company’s strong bias for action.

Typically, your journey will begin with a recruiter screen to assess your background, clearance eligibility (if applicable), and mission alignment. This is followed by a technical phone screen with an engineer, which usually involves a collaborative coding or scripting exercise, alongside foundational infrastructure questions. Anduril prioritizes engineers who can write robust automation, so expect to write actual code in Python, Go, or Bash.

The onsite loop is comprehensive and usually consists of four to five rounds. You will face a system design interview focused on infrastructure architecture, a deep-dive troubleshooting session, an infrastructure-as-code practical assessment, and a behavioral round with engineering leadership. Throughout the onsite, interviewers will look for your ability to communicate trade-offs clearly and adapt your designs to the unique constraints of defense technology.

This timeline illustrates the typical progression from your initial recruiter screen through the technical phone screen and the multi-stage onsite loop. Use this visual to pace your preparation, ensuring you review coding and scripting early in the process before shifting your focus to complex system design and deep-dive troubleshooting for the final rounds.

Deep Dive into Evaluation Areas

To succeed in the Anduril interview loop, you must demonstrate mastery across several core infrastructure domains. Interviewers will push past surface-level knowledge to see how well you understand the underlying mechanics of your tools.

Infrastructure as Code and Declarative Systems

Anduril manages a highly complex matrix of deployments spanning public clouds, secure government clouds, and edge hardware. You will be heavily evaluated on your ability to automate and manage these environments reliably.

Be ready to go over:

• Terraform and CloudFormation – Structuring state, writing modular code, and managing multi-environment deployments.
• Nix and NixOS – Understanding reproducible builds and declarative system configuration (a critical component of Anduril's stack).
• CI/CD Pipelines – Building robust deployment pipelines using tools like Buildkite, GitHub Actions, or GitLab CI.
• Advanced concepts – Managing drift in disconnected environments, zero-downtime deployments to edge hardware, and immutable infrastructure patterns.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Walk me through how you would structure a Terraform repository to deploy the same application across AWS Commercial, AWS GovCloud, and a local on-premise cluster."
• "How do you handle secrets management in a CI/CD pipeline that deploys to a disconnected environment?"
• "Explain the concept of reproducible builds and why they are valuable in a highly secure environment."

Containerization and Orchestration

Because Lattice OS is deployed everywhere from the cloud to ruggedized servers in the field, container orchestration is a major focus. You must deeply understand Kubernetes and container internals.

Be ready to go over:

• Kubernetes Architecture – The control plane, etcd, kubelet, and how components interact.
• Container Internals – Namespaces, cgroups, and the Linux kernel mechanisms that make containers work.
• Edge Orchestration – Running lightweight Kubernetes distributions (like K3s) on resource-constrained hardware.
• Advanced concepts – Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs), operators, and debugging network policies (Calico/Cilium).

Example questions or scenarios:

• "A pod is stuck in a CrashLoopBackOff state on a node with intermittent network connectivity. Walk me through your debugging steps."
• "How would you design a Kubernetes cluster architecture for a fleet of 500 autonomous drones that occasionally lose connection to the central control plane?"
• "Explain how container networking works under the hood when two pods on different nodes need to communicate."

Linux Internals and Networking

A strong DevOps Engineer at Anduril must be highly proficient in Linux. You will be tested on your ability to debug complex OS-level and network-level issues from first principles.

Be ready to go over:

• System Performance – CPU, memory, disk I/O, and using tools like strace, tcpdump, htop, and perf.
• Networking Fundamentals – TCP/IP, DNS, BGP, routing, and VPNs (WireGuard, IPSec).
• Security and Permissions – SELinux, AppArmor, IAM, and zero-trust network architectures.
• Advanced concepts – eBPF for observability, debugging kernel panics, and securing air-gapped systems.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "You type curl https://anduril.com and it hangs. Walk me through every layer of the network stack to troubleshoot the issue."
• "How would you securely connect a remote sensor tower over a public LTE network back to a secure AWS GovCloud environment?"
• "Explain how you would use strace to figure out why a newly deployed binary is failing to start."

Scripting and Automation

Anduril treats infrastructure as a software engineering discipline. You will be expected to write clean, efficient code to automate operational tasks, build tooling, and interact with APIs.

Be ready to go over:

• Python or Go – Writing robust scripts, handling errors, and interacting with REST/gRPC APIs.
• Bash Scripting – Automating quick tasks and writing reliable startup scripts.
• Data Parsing – Manipulating JSON, YAML, and log formats efficiently.
• Advanced concepts – Concurrency in Go, building custom CLI tools for developer experience, and writing testable automation code.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Write a Python script that paginates through an AWS API to find all unattached EBS volumes and outputs their IDs to a file."
• "Given a massive log file, write a Bash one-liner to find the top 10 IP addresses that generated 500 errors."
• "Implement a concurrent worker pool in Go to process a queue of deployment tasks."

Key Responsibilities

As a DevOps Engineer at Anduril, your day-to-day work will be highly dynamic, bridging the gap between software development and physical hardware deployment. You will be responsible for designing, building, and maintaining the infrastructure that powers Lattice OS across public clouds, classified environments, and tactical edge devices.

A significant portion of your time will be spent writing infrastructure as code (using Terraform and Nix) to ensure that deployments are reproducible, secure, and scalable. You will build and optimize CI/CD pipelines that allow software engineers to ship code rapidly without breaking mission-critical systems. Collaboration is key; you will work closely with embedded engineers to understand hardware constraints and with security teams to ensure all infrastructure meets strict Department of Defense compliance standards.

Beyond building pipelines, you will act as a critical escalation point for complex system failures. This means diving deep into Linux internals, Kubernetes clusters, and network routing to troubleshoot issues that occur in non-standard environments. You will also drive initiatives to improve developer experience, building internal tooling that empowers engineering teams to self-serve infrastructure safely.

Role Requirements & Qualifications

Anduril looks for engineers who combine deep infrastructure knowledge with a software engineering mindset. The requirements vary slightly between the mid-level and senior tiers, but the core technical foundation remains the same.

• Must-have skills – Deep expertise in Linux administration and troubleshooting. Strong proficiency in Kubernetes and container orchestration. Extensive experience with public cloud platforms (AWS preferred) and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform). Solid programming skills in Python, Go, or Bash.
• Experience level – Mid-level roles generally require 3–5 years of relevant experience, while Senior roles (like the Senior Software Engineer - Infrastructure and DevOps) require 6+ years of experience designing and scaling complex distributed systems.
• Soft skills – Extreme ownership, a strong bias for action, and the ability to communicate complex technical trade-offs clearly to non-infrastructure engineers. You must be comfortable navigating ambiguity and driving projects to completion independently.
• Nice-to-have skills – Experience with Nix and NixOS is a massive differentiator. Familiarity with edge computing, IoT deployments, or disconnected environments. Experience working in DoD, cleared, or highly regulated environments (e.g., AWS GovCloud, SCIFs).

Common Interview Questions

The questions below represent the types of challenges you will face during the Anduril interview process. They are designed to test not just your factual knowledge, but your ability to reason through complex, constrained scenarios.

Infrastructure and Edge System Design

These questions test your ability to architect systems that span both traditional cloud environments and ruggedized hardware in the field.

• How would you design a deployment system for a fleet of remote drones that only have connectivity for 5 minutes a day?
• Design a secure architecture to stream high-bandwidth video from a sensor tower to AWS while minimizing latency.
• How do you handle database migrations in an environment where you cannot guarantee all edge nodes will update simultaneously?
• Walk me through the architecture of a highly available Kubernetes cluster spanning multiple availability zones.
• How would you design a centralized logging and monitoring solution for thousands of disconnected edge devices?

Linux Internals and Troubleshooting

Interviewers want to see how deep you can go when abstractions fail.

• A critical service is consuming 100% CPU. Walk me through your exact steps and the tools you would use to debug it.
• Explain what happens in the Linux kernel when a process runs out of memory (OOM).
• How do you troubleshoot a system that is dropping network packets intermittently?
• Describe the difference between a hard link and a soft link, and explain how inodes work.
• You have lost SSH access to a remote Linux machine, but it is still responding to pings. What are your next steps?

Infrastructure as Code and Automation

These questions evaluate your ability to write reliable, scalable deployment code.

• How do you structure Terraform state for a multi-region, multi-environment architecture?
• Explain how you would implement a zero-downtime deployment pipeline for a stateful application.
• What are the trade-offs between using Terraform, Ansible, and Nix for configuration management?
• How do you test your infrastructure code before applying it to production?
• Write a script that automatically detects and remediates AWS security group rules that expose port 22 to the public internet.

Behavioral and Mission Alignment

Anduril values extreme ownership and a bias for action.

• Tell me about a time you had to troubleshoot a critical production outage under extreme time pressure.
• Describe a project where you had to push back on a software engineering team's architectural decision. How did you handle it?
• Give an example of a time you automated a process that saved your team significant time.
• How do you prioritize your work when everything feels like a critical mission priority?
• Why do you want to work in defense technology, and why Anduril specifically?

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do I need to know Nix before interviewing? While prior experience with Nix and NixOS is highly valued and will make your onboarding much easier, it is not strictly required to pass the interview. However, you should familiarize yourself with the concepts of declarative package management and reproducible builds, and be prepared to discuss why Anduril might choose Nix over Docker or Ansible for certain workloads.

Q: How much coding should I expect in the interview? You should expect at least one dedicated coding or scripting round. Anduril expects DevOps Engineers to be capable software engineers. You will need to write functional, clean code in Python, Go, or Bash to solve automation, API interaction, or data parsing problems.

Q: What is the culture like for the infrastructure team? The culture is highly autonomous, fast-paced, and deeply integrated with the product. You are not a siloed IT support function; you are building the core platform that enables Lattice OS to function in the real world. There is a strong emphasis on "moving fast and fixing things," extreme ownership, and direct collaboration with hardware and AI teams.

Q: Will I have to work in a SCIF or go into the office? Anduril generally operates on an in-office or hybrid model, especially for roles based in Reston, VA, due to the nature of the hardware and classified work. Depending on the specific team and project, you may be required to work in a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) for portions of your week.

Other General Tips

• Think Beyond the Cloud: Standard web-scale SaaS answers will only get you so far. Always consider the constraints of edge computing—limited bandwidth, intermittent connectivity, and rugged hardware—when answering system design questions.
• Embrace First Principles: Interviewers will intentionally give you scenarios involving obscure errors or tools you haven't used. Do not panic. Break the problem down to its fundamental Linux, networking, or computing principles and explain your thought process out loud.
• Show Your Bias for Action: Anduril values engineers who take the initiative to fix broken things without waiting for permission. In your behavioral interviews, highlight stories where you identified a systemic issue, built a tool to solve it, and drove adoption across the team.
• Brush Up on Security: Working in defense tech means security cannot be an afterthought. Be prepared to discuss zero-trust architectures, secure enclaves, IAM least-privilege principles, and how to secure CI/CD pipelines against supply chain attacks.

Summary & Next Steps

Securing a DevOps Engineer role at Anduril is a highly rewarding achievement that places you at the forefront of modern defense technology. You will be solving complex infrastructure challenges that have a direct, tangible impact on national security and the safety of personnel in the field. By preparing deeply across Linux internals, Kubernetes, infrastructure as code, and edge computing constraints, you will position yourself as a strong, capable candidate.

The compensation data above reflects the base salary ranges for the Reston, VA location, spanning from $129,000 to$171,000 for mid-level engineers, and up to $220,000 for Senior DevOps Engineers. Keep in mind that Anduril also typically offers competitive equity packages and benefits that significantly increase total compensation, reflecting the high caliber of engineering talent they require.

Approach your preparation with the same extreme ownership and bias for action that Anduril values in its employees. Practice writing clean automation code, review your foundational networking and OS concepts, and practice articulating your system design decisions clearly. You have the technical foundation to succeed—now it is time to refine your execution. For more detailed interview insights, question banks, and preparation resources, continue exploring Dataford. Good luck with your interviews!