Senior Software Engineer, Strategic Defense (Active Clearance)

Aberdeen · Colorado Springs · San Antonio · Tampa · Costa Mesa, CA (OC-00) · USD 166,000-292,000 · 3-12 years experience · Posted Oct 11, 2026

At a glance

Experience: 3-12 years experience
Location: Aberdeen · Colorado Springs · San Antonio · Tampa · Costa Mesa, CA (OC-00)
Salary: USD 166,000-292,000 · Base salary

The Strategic Defense team at Anduril protects the United States and its allies from ballistic, hypersonic, and air-breathing threats by building a software-defined command and control layer.
As a Software Engineer in Strategic Defense, you will write code side-by-side with elite peers to solve a wide variety of problems involving networking, autonomy, systems integration, robotics, and more.

Own software solutions that are deployed to customers at the edge of innovation and necessity
Write code to improve robust C2 products and scale mission capabilities to broaden our impact
Collaborate across multiple engineering teams to plan, build, and test functionality of complex systems
Partner with end-users to turn needs into features quickly while balancing user experience and engineering constraints
Travel 10 - 30% with the team to build, test, and deploy capabilities in the real world where they’re needed most

Currently possesses and is able to maintain an active U.S. Secret security clearance (or higher)
3-12+ years writing production software in languages like C++, Rust, Go, or Python that real users or systems depend on
You've owned a feature or service end-to-end including design, implementation, deployment, and dealing with it when it breaks
You've debugged problems in code you didn't write and systems you didn't design
You're comfortable making engineering decisions with incomplete requirements and revisiting them when reality disagrees
You can explain technical tradeoffs to people who aren't software engineers (operators, hardware engineers, customers)

A desire to work on critical software that has a real-world impact
Exposure to robotics, distributed systems, networking, or real-time systems
Experience with mid and upper tier Air Defense Command and Control (C2) programs
Have worked where software touches physical hardware
Experience building software solutions involving significant amounts of data processing and analysis
Degree in a relevant field like Computer Science, Math, or Physics
Willing to travel up to 20% to Asia Pacific

Highly competitive equity grants included in the majority of full time offers
Top-tier benefits for full-time employees supporting health, recovery, and whatever comes next

Travel 10 - 30% with the team to build, test, and deploy capabilities in the real world