Applications Engineer

Required Skills & Experience

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 8 or more years in quality engineering, manufacturing engineering, metrology, or NDT, in aerospace, naval or maritime, medical device, defense, or another highly regulated manufacturing environment, with recent years owning methods development and standard work authoring rather than production execution.
• Demonstrated hands-on experience authoring and maintaining controlled standard work - procedures, work instructions, technique sheets - for a quality or manufacturing discipline, released under formal change control and tied to item revisions.
• Working proficiency in model-based inspection programming on at least one platform in use in the industry: Zeiss Calypso, Hexagon PC-DMIS, CAMIO, PolyWorks Inspector, or comparable. You have personally written inspection programs that run on a CMM or portable arm, not just managed people who do.
• Working knowledge of GD&T per ASME Y14.5, characteristics per the DMSC MBC standard, and how both map to inspection planning and inspection programming. You can make specific decisions about how a datum reference frame becomes a measurement setup.
• Familiarity with destructive and non-destructive testing methods as applied to structural metallic parts: at minimum awareness of the applicable methods, technique sheet structure, and personnel qualification requirements under NAS410 or ASNT SNT-TC-1A.
• Working knowledge of measurement systems analysis: you have planned and executed Gauge R&R studies and can explain what the result means for a measurement decision.
• Ability to read and work with model-based definition data formats: STEP AP242, QIF, and JT, and specifically how PMI and characteristics are carried in each for inspection use.
• Experience performing tool validation or production-readiness assessment for deployed quality or engineering software, including consumption testing and defect documentation.
• On site, Costa Mesa, California; remote exceptions at management discretion for exceptional candidates
• Clearance Eligible

Nice to Have Skills & Experience

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Direct, hands-on experience with Siemens NX at the level of PMI reading and model completeness assessment, and with Teamcenter or Active Workspace at the item revision and dataset level.
• NDT Level II or Level III certification in one or more methods (UT, RT, MT, PT, ET), or demonstrated experience managing a multi-method personnel certification program to NAS410, ASNT SNT-TC-1A, or CP-189.
• Experience with large-volume metrology - laser tracker, structured-light scanning, photogrammetry - applied to ships, hull sections, or other large fabricated structures, including measurement uncertainty estimation.
• Experience with a manufacturing execution or digital-thread platform such as Anduril Forge, Siemens Opcenter, or Solumina/iBase-t, and with how inspection data returns to those systems.
• Experience with MIL-STD-31000 Technical Data Packages and AS9102 First Article Inspection.
• Background in shipbuilding, submarine construction, aerospace structures, or another large discrete assembly environment with complex inspection and NDT regimes.
• Experience with Palantir Foundry or a comparable data integration platform used for quality data analytics or digital-thread pipelines.
• Familiarity with PFMEA and how failure mode analysis drives inspection method selection and control plan content.
• Experience in a greenfield or scaling manufacturing environment, building quality systems from scratch rather than operating an established one.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted document generation, requirements analysis, or workflow automation applied to quality or inspection processes.

Anduril Industries is an equal opportunity employer.

Job Description

ABOUT THE TEAM

Maritime Digital Production is the software and digital systems function within Anduril's Heavy Metal division. We build and deploy the technology stack that powers Anduril's shipbuilding factories: the data infrastructure that makes every machine and sensor visible in real time, the manufacturing execution system that workers and planners use every shift, the scheduling engine that replans production in minutes instead of days, and the AI systems that remove manual toil from the shop floor and business operations. We operate at the boundary between Operational Technology and Information Technology, incubating solutions close to the production line, validating them with real operators, hardening them for reliability and security, and scaling them across sites. The environment is fast, physical, and consequential. When our systems go down, production stops. The output of our work is not a dashboard: it is a ship. We are scaling from a founding team to more than 70 engineers across multiple U.S. sites, and you will be joining early to shape how model-based quality and inspection are built and governed at Anduril.

ABOUT THE JOB

We are building a quality and inspection system that runs directly from the Technical Data Package - where a characteristic defined once in the model drives inspection programming, NDT planning, measurement execution, and result capture without re-entry, translation, or a paper traveler at any step. The tools exist in various states of deployment. What does not yet exist is the governing framework: the standard work, inspection programming methods, measurement systems governance, traceability architecture, and tool validation rigor that makes model-based quality a repeatable, auditable practice rather than a proof-of-concept. You are the person who builds and operates that framework. You will personally author and maintain controlled procedures, work instructions, and NDT technique sheets. You will define and prove model-based CMM and inspection programming methods from PMI-bearing NX models. You will govern measurement systems analysis and calibration across a mixed estate of contact and non-contact metrology equipment. You will validate that deployed quality tools meet QMS requirements and perform as specified on production hardware. And you will run the support operations that keep those tools working for the quality engineers and technicians who depend on them every shift. This is not a quality management role. You are not an auditor and you are not a systems integrator. You are a technical practitioner with hands on inspection programming, NDT methods, and model-based data who understands the full chain from TDP characteristic through inspection program to recorded result - and who can identify where that chain is broken, write the standard that fixes it, and prove the fix works on real Anduril parts. The role spans destructive and non-destructive testing, contact and non-contact measurement, dimensional and NDT disciplines, and the digital methods - QIF, STEP AP242, JT - that carry inspection data through the toolchain without manual intervention. If you have depth in one of those areas and exposure to the others, this is the job. If your quality career has been audit trails and corrective action logs rather than programming and methods development, it is not.

INSPECTION AND NDT STANDARD WORK

The first and largest part of the job is authoring and maintaining the controlled standard work that governs how inspection, NDT, and metrology are performed. That means inspection procedures written against specific item revisions and released under Anduril change control, NDT procedure and technique sheet sets covering every applicable method on the program, metrology work instructions for CMM, portable arm, and large-volume systems, and a standard work index that maps every procedure to the process, tool, and characteristic class it governs. Today most of this material exists as paper and PDF and is not structured against the parts and characteristics it qualifies. You will convert it. You will write the standard work that does not yet exist. And you will maintain both sets as the product changes, the tools evolve, and new inspection requirements come online. Standard work is not a project milestone: it is a continuous responsibility, and you own it. NDT is a full part of the scope. That includes digitizing legacy technique sheets and qualification records, structuring NDT digital records to the data model the program requires, and building the personnel qualification matrix tied to NAS410, ASNT SNT-TC-1A, or CP-189 as applicable. You will not act as the certifying body. You will build and maintain the structure that makes the certification program auditable and current.

MODEL-BASED INSPECTION PROGRAMMING AND TOOL VALIDATION

The second part of the job is defining and proving the methods by which CMM and inspection programs are generated directly from PMI-bearing models, and validating that the tools doing that work are fit for production use. You will write the model completeness and wellformedness criteria that define what a model must contain to be machine-consumable for inspection programming - stated in terms of STEP AP242, QIF, and JT content requirements, not in terms of visual appearance. You will author method sheets for each inspection platform in use. You will prove those methods on real Anduril part geometry, not on generic sample parts. And you will build the defect catalog of recurring model conditions that break downstream inspection programming, paired with the authoring rules that prevent each one. Tool validation is a distinct and ongoing responsibility. Deployed tools are not validated once and left alone: they change, the models they consume change, and the production hardware they are applied to changes. You will perform validation and production-readiness assessments of the model-based quality toolchain, including NX, Teamcenter, Forge, and adjacent inspection and metrology software. You will evaluate software updates - NX releases, PMI functionality changes - before they enter the production environment. You will run consumption testing across PLM, CAD, CAM, CAI, and MES integration points. And you will maintain the gap register that tracks every tool deficiency with a prioritized closure path. You will also operate the support function for deployed tools: resolving user issues, debugging workflows, coordinating defect resolution with vendors, and providing hands-on troubleshooting for quality engineers and technicians who hit problems in the field. This is not a peripheral part of the role. Tools that are deployed but not supported degrade. You own the support posture.

CHARACTERIZATION TRACEABILITY AND DATA RETURN

Every inspection and NDT requirement must trace to a specific characteristic in the TDP. Every result must return to the system of record without manual re-entry. Neither of those things is currently true across the program, and closing both gaps is a core deliverable of this role. You will define the traceability model: the required relationships between TDP characteristic, inspection requirement, inspection method, measurement result, and disposition. You will write the data return specification: the fields, formats, and interfaces by which inspection and NDT results are written back to Teamcenter and Forge. You will build the gap register identifying every point where data is currently re-entered by hand, and you will own the closure path for each gap. And you will prove traceability is closed - not assert it - through a demonstrated worked example on a representative part family. This work sits at the intersection of quality, digital engineering, and PLM. You will work with manufacturing engineers, data engineers, and the digital tools teams to close the gaps. The traceability architecture is yours to define; implementation will involve those teams. Holding them to the requirements you have written is part of the job.

MEASUREMENT SYSTEMS AND QUALITY GOVERNANCE

Contact and non-contact measurement across a large discrete assembly environment requires governance that most organizations have not built. CMM programs measuring machined features, portable arms used on fabricated structure, laser trackers on hull sections, and structured-light scanners on complex surfaces each have different uncertainty characteristics, different calibration requirements, and different capability limitations against the characteristics they are asked to measure. You will establish measurement systems analysis and calibration governance across this estate. That means executing Gauge R&R studies on agreed measurement systems, writing the calibration governance procedure covering interval setting and out-of-tolerance escalation, producing measurement uncertainty guidance for large-volume metrology, and building and maintaining the metrology asset register that tracks method capability, calibration status, and approved characteristic classes for each piece of equipment. Quality readiness at program gates is the downstream consequence of all this work. You will define the inspection, NDT, and metrology evidence that must exist to pass each MRL gate, write the readiness assessment method, and execute assessments at the gates occurring within the period of performance. The criteria are yours to write; the gate decisions belong to program leadership.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

Three outcomes, in priority order. These are how the role is measured. Standard work is current, controlled, and complete. Every inspection, NDT, and metrology method in use on the program has a released procedure written against a specific item revision. NDT technique sheets and personnel qualification records are in structured digital form and tied to the parts and characteristics they qualify. No paper traveler is the governing reference for how inspection is performed. Inspection programs are generated from the model with zero manual re-entry. CMM and inspection programs for at least one agreed part family are generated directly from PMI-bearing models, with characteristic traceability from TDP through to recorded result in the system of record. The model defect catalog and wellformedness criteria exist in a form that prevents future programs from breaking the chain. Deployed tools are validated, supported, and improving. Every quality tool in the production environment has a documented validation status. Software updates do not enter production without a consumption test. User issues are resolved through a defined support process. The gap register is current and the backlog it feeds is accepted by the receiving product teams.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Authoring and maintaining controlled inspection procedures, NDT technique sheets, and metrology work instructions, released under Anduril change control against specific item revisions
• Defining and proving model-based CMM and inspection programming methods from PMI-bearing NX models, on real Anduril part geometry
• Building the characteristic-to-inspection traceability model and the data return specification that closes the loop from TDP characteristic through to result in Teamcenter and Forge
• Validating deployed quality tools and performing production-readiness assessments, including consumption testing across PLM, CAD, CAM, CAI, and MES integration points
• Operating help-desk and support for deployed model-based quality tools: resolving user issues, debugging workflows, and coordinating defect resolution with vendors
• Evaluating software enhancements and platform updates - NX releases, PMI functionality changes - before they enter the production environment, and integrating approved changes into the tool roadmap
• Executing Gauge R&R and measurement systems analysis studies and building calibration governance across the metrology estate
• Digitizing and structuring legacy NDT technique sheets, procedure sets, and personnel qualification records, and governing NDT certification currency
• Writing and maintaining the tool gap register and backlog-ready requirements for each prioritized deficiency, and tracking closure through the receiving product teams
• Assessing inspection, NDT, and metrology discipline maturity against the NSE MBE Maturity Index and producing the sequenced roadmap between current state and target
• Developing and delivering training materials differentiated by audience - quality engineers, technicians, supplier quality personnel - and maintaining competency records
• Working with Manufacturing, Operations, Supplier Quality, and Digital Technologies teams to understand their digital maturity and provide troubleshooting and adoption support
• Collaborating with software vendors to guide development, enhancement prioritization, and long-term tool evolution
• Providing technical representation at design reviews, audits, customer reviews, and supplier assessments, with written findings and actions from each

WHAT THIS ROLE DOES NOT OWN

Stated explicitly, because the scope is broad.

• Inspection execution as a staffing backfill. You define and govern the methods; quality technicians perform the inspections.
• NDT certification authority. You build and govern the program structure; certification belongs to the accredited body.
• Procurement, installation, or physical calibration of metrology hardware.
• Software development of Forge or Teamcenter core configuration. Requirements you write go to those teams; you do not build the tools.
• Product design authority or disposition authority on nonconforming hardware.
• Engineering management. You will have no direct reports.