Senior Software Engineer, RAIL

In Anduril's Tactical Recon and Strike (TRS) division, we're pushing the boundaries of aerial drone technology. We're the driving force behind groundbreaking products like Ghost, Anvil, Bolt, and Altius, taking them from concept to fully operational systems that are reshaping the landscape of defense and security. Our team tackles the entire spectrum of small drone development (Group 1-3), from the drones themselves to the critical equipment needed for testing, deployment, and operation. We thrive on solving complex challenges, collaborating with specialist teams to deliver cutting-edge solutions for our customers. In TRS, you'll be at the forefront of innovation, working with state-of-the-art technology and pushing the limits of what autonomous systems can achieve. If you're passionate about creating transformative technology and want to be part of a team that's shaping the future of defense capabilities, we want to hear from you. Join us in our quest to develop game-changing aerial systems that are redefining what's possible in tactical reconnaissance and strike operations.

RAIL has two primary customers:

• 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.”
• 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!

• 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 bring their product to market.

• 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

• 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