Explosives Engineer Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

The Lethality team is responsible for the design, analysis, testing, and transition to production of advanced warhead and ordnance systems across multiple platforms. This team operates at the intersection of design engineering, explosives understanding, safety, test execution, and numerical analysis to help Anduril build high-performing, mission-relevant systems faster and with better technical judgment.

This is not a narrow, siloed engineering environment. The team supports a broad range of applications across land, air, sea, ship, underwater, and other mission contexts, depending on where warhead-related capability is needed. In practice, that means the team contributes not only to design maturity and performance analysis, but also to safety-related questions such as storage compatibility, accidental initiation, sympathetic detonation risk, and other system-level concerns.

The team also plays a critical role in helping Anduril move quickly without relying on unnecessary physical testing. Numerical analysis and simulation are used to guide design decisions, shape experimental setups, inform diagnostic strategies, interpret results, and improve future product and proposal work. This role sits directly in that loop.

Anduril is looking for a Warhead Design Engineer - Modeling & Simulation to join the  team in Costa Mesa, CA. This role is for an engineer who can use academic literature, empirical data, first-principles reasoning, and computational modeling to help steer warhead design and related ordnance decisions from concept maturity through testing and toward production readiness.

The objective of this role is not simply to run simulations. It is to use modeling and analysis as an engineering tool to improve decisions across design, explosive selection, initiation concepts, test planning, and post-test interpretation. The right person will help the team evaluate performance at a high level, build credible pre-test predictions, correlate model outputs to test data, and contribute to the broader engineering understanding needed to support complex munitions systems.

This role will support work across multiple programs rather than sitting in a tightly bounded lane. It is a strong fit for someone who wants broad technical exposure, meaningful influence on real engineering decisions, and the opportunity to work alongside a deeply technical team on some of the hardest warhead and effects problems in the business. Steven Todd described the role as one that should not be overly pigeonholed and that may grow into broader ownership over time depending on the person's strengths.

• Leverage academic studies and literature, empirical data, and simulation to steer the design of warheads and missile/ordnance systems from concept design maturity to production.
• Analyze lethality and performance using hand-calculations (Gurney equations) and multi-physics modeling and simulation tools (CTH, Sierra, Zapotec, etc.)
• Create pre-test predictions and correlate models with test data.
• Manage arena and system testing of munitions products from end-to-end, including project planning, design of experiments, and safety.
• Capture test video, compile data from ground and flight tests, and analyze results.
• Assemble/disassemble explosive test articles and precision targets.
• Individual Impact In this role, you will directly influence how Anduril designs, evaluates, and matures advanced warhead systems. Your work will help the team:
• absorb growing analysis demand across multiple active programs
• make better engineering decisions earlier in the development cycle
• reduce avoidable physical testing through smarter simulation and planning
• design more informative experiments and diagnostics strategies
• translate test data into better future designs, technical reports, customer-facing outputs, and proposal inputs

• BS or higher degree in mechanical, aerospace, explosives, or another engineering discipline.
• 2-10 years' work experience as an individual contributing engineer, focused on mechanical design, analysis, and testing of warheads or ordnance systems.
• Experience using multi-physics modeling and simulation tools such as ALE3D, Ansys Autodyn/LS-Dyna, CTH, EPIC, Matlab, Python, Sierra, Velodyne, Zapotec
• Test experience including data acquisition, data analysis, and project coordination
• Ability to travel as required for testing (surges up to 25%)
• Experience preparing engineering documentation (i.e. specifications, test procedures, technical reports, drawings, etc.)
• Passion for defending the United States and her allies
• Be able to obtain and hold a U.S. Top Secret security clearance
• Must be a U.S. Person due to required access to U.S. export controlled information or facilities

• Active U.S. security clearance (DoD Secret or Top-Secret or DOE L or Q)
• Expert level experience with multi-physics modeling and simulation tools
• Experience with munitions testing
• Experience with CAD design tools such as SolidWorks or NX CAD
• Prior experience in explosive operations and/or handling munitions
• Experience with the DoD Weapons Safety Boards
• Experience designing and scaling production of mechanical components at volume
• Experience developing or testing complex electrical or mechatronics systems