1. What is an Engineering Manager at Anduril?

As an Engineering Manager at Anduril, you are stepping into a high-stakes, mission-driven environment where software and hardware intersect to solve some of the most complex national security challenges. Anduril operates at a distinctly fast pace, building autonomous systems, sensor networks, and the core Lattice OS that powers them. In this role, you are not just managing a team of software engineers; you are driving the technical execution of products that have real-world, life-or-death implications.

Your impact will be felt directly across the business and the end-users in the field. You will guide teams through the entire product lifecycle, from initial prototyping to deploying robust, scalable solutions in austere environments. Whether your team is focused on computer vision, distributed systems, or platform infrastructure, your leadership ensures that engineering output aligns perfectly with strategic defense objectives and rapid deployment timelines.

What makes this role uniquely compelling is the sheer scale and complexity of the problem space. Anduril rejects the traditional defense contracting model in favor of a Silicon Valley approach to rapid iteration. You will be expected to navigate deep technical ambiguity, manage cross-functional dependencies with hardware and operations teams, and maintain an incredibly high bar for engineering excellence. It is a demanding role, but for the right leader, it offers unparalleled opportunities to build technology that genuinely matters.

2. Getting Ready for Your Interviews

Preparing for an interview at Anduril requires a strategic blend of technical review, leadership reflection, and a deep understanding of the company's mission. You should approach your preparation by focusing on past experiences where you successfully navigated high-growth, ambiguous environments.

Technical Depth & System Design – While you may not be writing production code every day, you are expected to hold your own in deep technical discussions. Interviewers will evaluate your ability to architect scalable systems, evaluate technical trade-offs, and guide your team through complex engineering challenges. You can demonstrate strength here by clearly articulating the architecture of systems you have previously owned.

Leadership & Team Building – Anduril values leaders who actively mentor, recruit, and retain top-tier talent. Your interviewers will assess how you handle team conflicts, performance management, and organizational scaling. Strong candidates provide concrete examples of how they have grown engineers, managed underperformers, and built cultures of high accountability.

Execution & Delivery – The ability to ship reliable products quickly is paramount. You will be evaluated on your project management skills, how you prioritize engineering work against product goals, and your strategies for mitigating risk. Highlight your experience in balancing technical debt with the need for rapid feature delivery.

Culture Fit & Mission Alignment – Anduril operates with a strong sense of urgency and purpose. Interviewers will look for your passion for the mission, your resilience in the face of setbacks, and your ability to thrive without a rigid corporate structure. Show that you are a proactive problem-solver who does not wait for permission to fix broken processes.

3. Interview Process Overview

The interview process for an Engineering Manager at Anduril is rigorous, dynamic, and designed to evaluate both your technical acumen and your leadership philosophy. Candidates often describe the process as highly energetic, featuring enjoyable, fast-paced conversations with passionate interviewers. You will typically start with a recruiter screen to assess your baseline experience and alignment with the company's mission.

Following the initial screen, you will move into technical and leadership deep dives. These rounds usually involve speaking with peer engineering managers, senior engineers, and product stakeholders. Anduril places a heavy emphasis on your past execution, so expect interviewers to probe deeply into the systems you have built and the teams you have led. The process is highly collaborative, reflecting the cross-functional nature of the work you will do in Costa Mesa or other engineering hubs.

The final onsite (or virtual onsite) stages are comprehensive, covering system design, behavioral leadership, and cross-functional collaboration. What distinguishes this process from other tech companies is the distinct focus on hardware-software integration and the mission-critical nature of the products. You are not just building web apps; you are building systems that must operate flawlessly in the field.

The visual timeline above outlines the typical stages of the Anduril interview process, from initial screening to the final comprehensive onsite rounds. Use this to pace your preparation, ensuring you allocate enough time to brush up on system design before the technical rounds, while simultaneously refining your leadership narratives for the behavioral stages. Note that specific stages may vary slightly depending on the exact team or product area you are interviewing for.

4. Deep Dive into Evaluation Areas

To succeed in the Engineering Manager interviews, you must demonstrate a mastery of several core competencies. Below is a detailed breakdown of the primary evaluation areas.

System Design and Architecture

As an Engineering Manager, your ability to guide technical direction is critical. Interviewers want to see that you can design robust, scalable, and fault-tolerant systems. Strong performance in this area means you can balance theoretical best practices with practical, real-world constraints, especially in environments with limited connectivity or high-security requirements.

Be ready to go over:

• Distributed Systems – Understanding how to build systems that scale horizontally and handle component failures gracefully.
• Data Pipelines & Storage – Designing architectures for ingesting, processing, and storing massive amounts of sensor or telemetry data.
• API & Interface Design – Creating clean, secure boundaries between microservices or between software and hardware components.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Edge computing architectures, real-time operating systems (RTOS) integration, and low-latency communication protocols.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Design a system to ingest and process real-time video feeds from a fleet of autonomous drones."
• "How would you architect a communication layer between a centralized command center and deployed hardware assets with intermittent connectivity?"
• "Walk me through the architecture of the most complex system your team recently shipped. What were the major bottlenecks?"

People Management and Team Building

Anduril needs leaders who can build and sustain high-performing teams in a high-pressure environment. This area evaluates your emotional intelligence, your approach to career development, and your ability to recruit top talent. A strong candidate will have a clear, adaptable framework for managing different types of engineers.

Be ready to go over:

• Performance Management – Strategies for coaching high performers and decisively handling underperformance.
• Recruiting & Scaling – Your approach to sourcing, interviewing, and closing top engineering candidates.
• Conflict Resolution – Navigating disagreements between engineers or between engineering and product teams.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Managing globally distributed teams or leading managers of managers (for senior roles).

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Tell me about a time you had to manage out a brilliant but toxic engineer."
• "How do you align a team's individual career goals with the urgent delivery needs of the business?"
• "Describe your process for ramping up a new engineer on a complex, undocumented legacy system."

Project Execution and Delivery

Your ability to turn product requirements into shipped software is constantly evaluated. This area tests your project management skills, your ability to prioritize ruthlessly, and how you handle shifting requirements. Strong candidates demonstrate a bias for action and a track record of delivering high-quality software on time.

Be ready to go over:

• Agile & Process Engineering – Adapting development methodologies to fit the team's needs without adding unnecessary overhead.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration – Working effectively with hardware engineers, product managers, and deployment operations.
• Risk Mitigation – Identifying technical and project risks early and communicating them to stakeholders.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Managing long-term capital expenditure projects or coordinating multi-year hardware/software release cycles.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Tell me about a time a critical project was falling behind schedule. How did you intervene, and what was the outcome?"
• "How do you balance the need to ship features quickly with the necessity of paying down technical debt?"
• "Describe a situation where you had to push back on a product manager's roadmap. How did you handle the negotiation?"

5. Key Responsibilities

As an Engineering Manager at Anduril, your day-to-day responsibilities revolve around driving technical excellence and ensuring your team delivers critical capabilities. You will spend a significant portion of your time aligning engineering efforts with the broader product vision, ensuring that your team understands not just what they are building, but why it matters to the mission. This involves translating high-level strategic goals into actionable engineering milestones and sprint plans.

Collaboration is a massive part of the role. You will frequently partner with product managers to define roadmaps and with hardware engineering teams to ensure seamless integration between physical assets and the Lattice OS. You will run planning sessions, conduct code architecture reviews, and facilitate cross-team syncs to unblock your engineers. Because Anduril moves quickly, you will also act as a shield for your team, filtering out noise and protecting their focus so they can execute efficiently.

Beyond project delivery, you are responsible for the health and growth of your team. This includes conducting regular 1-on-1s, providing actionable feedback, and charting career progression paths for your engineers. You will also dedicate time to recruiting—reviewing resumes, conducting interviews, and closing candidates to ensure your team scales appropriately to meet the demands of the business.

6. Role Requirements & Qualifications

To be a competitive candidate for the Engineering Manager position at Anduril, you must possess a strong blend of technical expertise and proven leadership experience.

• Must-have skills – A deep background in software engineering, typically with 7+ years of industry experience and at least 2-3 years of direct engineering management. You must have a strong grasp of system design, distributed systems, and modern cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP). Excellent communication skills and the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders are non-negotiable.
• Nice-to-have skills – Prior experience in the defense technology sector, aerospace, or working closely with hardware/robotics teams. Familiarity with C++, Rust, or Go is highly advantageous, as is experience with computer vision or machine learning pipelines.
• Experience level – Candidates are generally expected to have successfully guided teams through multiple full product lifecycles, from inception to deployment and maintenance. Experience in high-growth startups or fast-paced tech giants is highly valued, as it prepares you for the energetic and ambiguous environment at Anduril.
• Soft skills – Exceptional resilience, a strong bias for action, and the ability to foster a culture of ownership and accountability. You must be comfortable making high-stakes decisions with incomplete information.

7. Common Interview Questions

The questions below represent patterns and themes commonly encountered by candidates interviewing for the Engineering Manager role at Anduril. While you should not memorize answers, use these to guide your preparation and refine your personal narratives.

System Architecture & Scaling

These questions evaluate your technical depth and your ability to design systems that can handle the rigorous demands of Anduril's operational environments.

• How would you design a distributed sensor fusion platform that processes data from thousands of edge devices?
• Walk me through a time you had to scale a system that was hitting its performance limits. What were the bottlenecks?
• How do you ensure high availability and fault tolerance in a system that cannot rely on a continuous internet connection?
• Describe your approach to evaluating a new technology or framework for your team's stack.
• How do you balance building for long-term scalability versus shipping a minimum viable product quickly?

Behavioral & Leadership

These questions probe your management philosophy, how you handle adversity, and your strategies for building high-performing teams.

• Tell me about a time you had to lead a team through a significant organizational change or pivot in product strategy.
• Describe a situation where you strongly disagreed with a peer or a manager. How did you resolve it?
• How do you identify and cultivate leadership potential within your engineering team?
• Walk me through a time you failed as a manager. What did you learn, and how did you change your approach?
• How do you foster a culture of engineering excellence and psychological safety on your team?

Execution & Delivery

These questions assess your project management skills and your ability to deliver results in a fast-paced, cross-functional environment.

• Tell me about the most complex project you have managed. How did you handle cross-team dependencies?
• How do you manage technical debt while still meeting aggressive product delivery deadlines?
• Describe a time when a critical deployment went wrong. How did you handle the immediate crisis and the subsequent post-mortem?
• How do you measure the productivity and health of your engineering team?
• Tell me about a time you had to cut features to meet a strict deadline. How did you communicate this to stakeholders?

8. Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How difficult is the interview process for an Engineering Manager at Anduril? The process is rigorous and highly competitive, often described as average to above-average in difficulty. Interviewers are highly energetic and will push you on your technical depth and leadership narratives. Focused preparation on system design and having polished, concrete examples of past experiences are crucial.

Q: What differentiates successful candidates from the rest? Successful candidates demonstrate a clear bias for action, a deep passion for the national security mission, and the ability to thrive in ambiguity. They can seamlessly transition between high-level strategic thinking and deep technical problem-solving, and they have a proven track record of shipping impactful software.

Q: What is the working culture like for an Engineering Manager at Anduril? The culture is incredibly fast-paced, mission-driven, and highly collaborative. You will work alongside brilliant engineers who are deeply committed to solving hard problems. The environment is less structured than traditional tech giants, requiring you to be proactive and adaptable.

Q: How long does the interview process typically take? The timeline from the initial recruiter screen to a final offer decision generally spans 3 to 5 weeks, depending on interviewer availability and the urgency of the role. Anduril tends to move quickly once they identify a strong candidate.

Q: Is this role fully remote, or is there an in-office expectation? While policies can vary by specific team, Anduril places a strong emphasis on in-person collaboration, especially given the hardware-software integration nature of the work. Roles based in their Costa Mesa, CA headquarters or other major hubs typically require a significant in-office presence.

9. Other General Tips

• Own Your Impact: When discussing past projects, clearly distinguish between what the team accomplished and what your specific contributions were. Anduril interviewers want to know exactly how your leadership influenced the outcome.
• Embrace the Mission: Anduril is fundamentally a defense technology company. Be prepared to discuss why you are drawn to this specific mission and how you align with their goal of transforming national security capabilities.

• Structure Your Answers: Use frameworks like STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) for behavioral questions, and practice whiteboarding or drawing out architectures clearly for system design questions. Clarity of thought is highly valued.
• Prepare for Energetic Conversations: Candidates often report that interviewers are highly passionate and energetic. Match their energy, be ready for a dynamic back-and-forth dialogue, and do not be afraid to engage in spirited technical debates.
• Ask Insightful Questions: Use the time at the end of the interview to ask questions that show you understand the complexities of their business. Ask about hardware-software integration challenges, deployment environments, or how they measure success for a specific product.

10. Summary & Next Steps

Interviewing for an Engineering Manager role at Anduril is an exciting opportunity to join a company that is fundamentally reshaping defense technology. The role demands a unique combination of technical prowess, robust leadership, and the ability to execute flawlessly in a fast-paced, high-stakes environment. By preparing thoroughly, you can showcase your ability to lead teams that build critical, life-saving systems.

The compensation data above provides insight into the typical salary ranges and equity components for engineering leadership roles at Anduril. Use this information to understand your market value and to set realistic expectations during the offer stage. Keep in mind that total compensation often includes a competitive base salary, equity options, and comprehensive benefits tailored to high-performing tech talent.

Focus your final preparation on refining your system design architecture, polishing your leadership narratives, and clearly articulating your passion for the mission. Remember that the interviewers are looking for a peer—someone they can trust to drive critical initiatives and elevate the engineering culture. For more detailed interview insights, question banks, and preparation resources, continue exploring Dataford. You have the experience and the skills; now step into the interviews with confidence and show them the impact you can make.