VP Production, Mission Systems

ABOUT THE ROLE
The Vice President, Production, Mission Systems provides strategic leadership and operational oversight for all production activities within Anduril's Mission Systems organization. Mission Systems is one of Anduril's fastest-growing divisions, spanning three core product areas: Imaging, Battlespace Awareness, and Electronic Warfare. The division builds advanced, differentiated hardware powered by Lattice OS, Anduril's AI-driven command and control operating system. Encompassing production planning, supply chain, manufacturing engineering, and manufacturing operations across a geographically distributed footprint including sites in Costa Mesa, Lexington, Boulder, Santa Barbara, Fort Collins, and Huntsville. This role will be responsible for production across multiple business lines and multiple facilities. The VP orchestrates a portfolio of production programs, making resource allocation tradeoffs, setting the Mission Systems production strategy, and owning Mission Systems' production P&L. This executive is responsible for driving operational excellence and production efficiency in the near term while building the production capabilities necessary to support Mission Systems' and the company's long-term business objectives.


KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Establish and provide strategic and operational leadership across multiple production facilities - ensuring consistency in quality, cost, and delivery performance across geographies
• Lead and build the production capabilities of a portfolio of products, balancing investment, capacity, and talent allocation across product lines and production programs
• Partner with R&D, sales, and engineering teams to lead new product introduction efforts across multiple emerging product lines, developing from scratch the production lines and processes necessary to meet our customers’ requirements
• Drive division-level production strategy including facility footprint decisions, make-vs-buy analyses, capital deployment planning, and workforce sizing aligned to multi-year business forecasts. This person owns the division's production P&L
• Establish the operational excellence framework and continuous improvement culture across the division, leveraging lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, or similar methodologies to reduce costs, improve yields, and increase throughput
• Establish and monitor KPIs across safety, quality, delivery, schedule, and cost to ensure performance targets are met across multiple production sites, including international expansions
• Build and develop a high-performing production organization through talent development and a strong culture of accountability
• Support capital planning, budgeting, and resource allocation for production functions across the division
• Ensure compliance with all regulatory, environmental, health, and safety requirements
• Lead capacity planning and footprint strategy, including evaluation of new facilities and/or manufacturing technologies
• Serve as a member of the division's senior leadership team, contributing to division and corporate strategic planning; represent the production organization in executive, customer, and investor contexts as appropriate
• Collaborate in a matrix environment with strong relationships and influence ability across multiple stakeholders across the business
• Lead workforce and location strategy, including labor market analysis, site selection criteria, and workforce sizing, to support new line stand-ups and geographic expansion

QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, Operations Management, or a related field; MBA or advanced degree preferred
• 15+ years of progressive manufacturing leadership experience, with at least 7-10 years in a senior or executive role overseeing organizations of 500+ employees; experience in a high- or hyper-growth environment
• Proven track record of leading large, complex manufacturing operations across multiple sites or locations
• Experience managing simultaneous product ramps across multiple facilities and scaling international manufacturing operations required
• Experience across all 5 pillars of production: production planning, supply chain, manufacturing engineering, operations, and quality
• Demonstrated ability to set and scale an operational excellence framework across a division, with deep expertise in lean manufacturing and continuous improvement
• Prior experience managing large budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars and capital programs
• Excellent leadership, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills
• Experience in regulated industries (e.g., defense, automotive, aerospace, medical devices) a plus
• Direct P&L ownership in a production environment with demonstrated ability to manage financial performance at division scale
• Executive presence and sophisticated communication skills; proven ability to influence C-suite stakeholders, represent the production function externally, and shape corporate-level strategy