Military Drone Contractor Jobs in Decatur, GA (NOW HIRING)

About The Team

The Launched Effects team at Anduril builds Altius-a revolutionary family of tube-launched, highly autonomous drones (often referred to as loitering munitions or tactical drones). Altius can be launched from air, land, or sea, delivering precise intelligence, surveillance, and strike capabilities directly to the modern battlefield. Built and designed at our state-of-the-art facility in Atlanta, Altius represents the cutting edge of autonomous flight and defense technology.
About the Role

As the Product Operations Manager for Altius, you will lead the team responsible for ensuring our global fleet of autonomous drones is mission-ready.
This is a high-impact leadership role at the intersection of hardware engineering, software development, and military operations. You will lead and mentor a team of specialists to diagnose system health, root-cause complex electromechanical challenges, and partner with engineering to implement permanent product upgrades. If you are a technical leader who thrives in fast-paced environments, loves solving complex puzzles, and wants to lead a team at the forefront of national security, we want to talk to you.
What You'll Do

• Lead Technical Operations: Guide and mentor a high-performing Product Operations team, setting the standard for how we triage, diagnose, and resolve technical incidents across our global drone fleet.
• Drive Fleet Reliability: Partner directly with software and hardware engineering teams to translate real-world field telemetry and failure data into permanent system upgrades and design improvements.
• Analyze System Telemetry: Oversee the collection and analysis of fleet health data using advanced data-driven tools, helping to predict and prevent failures before they happen.
• Bridge the Gap: Act as the critical translator between deeply technical engineering teams, business development stakeholders, and military operators in the field.
• Customer & Mission Support: Ensure exceptional technical support for our global users, managing communications around high-priority incidents and driving them to rapid resolution.
• Build the Playbook: Standardize and scale our sustainment operations, creating the processes that will support Altius as the fleet grows exponentially worldwide.

Required Qualifications

• Proven Technical Leadership: 6+ years of professional experience managing, mastering, and supporting complex technical systems (aerospace, robotics, automotive, defense, or electromechanical systems).
• Education: Bachelor's degree in a technical or related field, OR equivalent hands-on military, aerospace, or industrial technical experience.
• Problem-Solving Mindset: A proven ability to navigate ambiguous situations and lead teams through complex, unstructured technical challenges.
• Leadership & Mentorship: Experience managing, coaching, or leading technical teams, with a focus on professional development and operational excellence.
• Clearance & Location: Eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. Secret Security clearance, and based in (or willing to relocate to) the Atlanta, GA area.
• Travel: Ability to travel as needed to support customer operations and test events.

Preferred Qualifications
We recognize that great leaders come from diverse backgrounds. We do not expect you to meet every single one of these criteria:

• Experience supporting and/or deploying loitering munitions, tactical missiles, or unmanned aerial systems (UAS/Drones) as a DoD contractor or military end-user.
• Familiarity with conventional ordnance systems, combat arms, or military aviation operations.
• Hands-on experience with Linux command-line interfaces (CLI).
• Familiarity with modern observability and ticketing tools (such as Grafana, Jira, or Git).
• Experience leveraging data analytics (such as SQL or Palantir Foundry) to conduct trend analysis and drive business decisions.
• Prior military, DoD civilian, or government agency experience.
• A background in technical project management or operations consulting.