Get a Job at Anduril: Interview Process and Top Questions

Learn how to prepare for Anduril interviews with this in-depth guide.

We break down the Anduril interview process and the top questions you should expect to answer.

About Anduril

What is Anduril?

Anduril Industries is a defense technology company founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey, Brian Schimpf, Trae Stephens, Matt Grimm, and Joe Chen. It builds autonomous systems, drones, counter-drone systems, and the Lattice software platform that connects sensors and weapons for the US military and allied governments.

Where is Anduril located?

Anduril is headquartered at "The Press" in Costa Mesa, California, with engineering offices in Seattle, Boston, Washington DC, and Irvine, plus international sites in London and Sydney. The company employs around 7,000 people across roughly 35 locations and is building a new campus in Long Beach set to open in 2027.

Who does Anduril hire?

Anduril hires around a mission it describes as transforming US and allied military capabilities, and that mission shapes how it interviews. Software engineers, technical program managers, and other technical staff get assessed on genuine conviction about defense work alongside raw ability.

That emphasis traces back to the company's Palantir lineage and a flat, high-ownership culture where individual engineers reach decision-makers quickly. For engineering roles, recruiters map candidates to areas like perception, machine learning infrastructure, and backend systems, often finalizing team placement after an offer.

Anduril Interview Resources

• Anduril Software Engineer Interview Guide
• Anduril Interview Questions
• Anduril Interview Experiences
• Anduril Company Page

Anduril Interview Process

The Anduril interview process runs three stages for most roles. The Anduril hiring process moves fast, and candidates often hear back the day after each round.

• A recruiter phone screen, around 30 minutes, focused on your background, technical interests, and motivation for working in defense.
• A technical or hiring manager screen, around 60 minutes, either a coding round with an engineer or a screening call with a director.
• A final onsite loop of three to four 60-minute sessions covering coding, system design, and behavioral interviews, plus program execution for technical program manager roles.

How long does the interview process take?

Most candidates finish the full loop in about three to four weeks, and turnaround between rounds is quick. One software engineering candidate heard back the day after each interview, and Glassdoor reviews put the average at roughly 28 days.

Does Anduril's interview process vary by role?

Yes, and the gap is mostly about depth. New grad and general software engineering loops test fundamentals, while experienced hires match to a team first and then face area-specific questions on skills like C++, perception, or air defense systems.

Program roles follow a similar shape but swap most coding rounds for execution and ownership interviews. Front-end candidates report React-based exercises, and mission software roles lean toward practical, defense-themed coding questions.

Is there a take-home assignment?

No take-home assignment showed up in candidate reports. The technical evaluation happens live, on HackerRank for the phone screen and in a shared editor during the onsite.

How does Anduril make hiring decisions?

Hiring is team-specific, and the bar combines technical ability with genuine area fit. If you clear the loop but a team decides you'd fit better elsewhere, the recruiter may circulate your profile to other teams, which can add a round or two of interviews.

Recruiter Phone Screen

"Why Anduril?" is asked in multiple rounds, not just once — typically in both the recruiter screen and a final behavioral with a senior leader. It functions as a genuine values filter. Interviewers are checking whether you're comfortable working in defense, not just whether you have a polished answer. Be specific about the impact of the problems and your actual stance on the mission; a vague 'I want a challenge' framing doesn't hold up under follow-up.

The phone screen prompt is deliberately ambiguous. Interviewers care more about whether you keep asking clarifying questions than whether you arrive at a perfect solution. A verified loop included a confusing photography/arrangement prompt where the candidate spent most of the round just modeling the problem space — and still moved forward. Don't rush to code; define the problem first.

What is the Anduril recruiter phone screen?

Anduril's recruiter phone screen goes deeper than most. Recruiters tend to know the role well and can answer specific questions about the team and the work, which candidates noted is unusual for a first call.

The recruiter spends real time mapping your interests to specific areas: perception, ML infrastructure, backend, or software engineering fundamentals. For new grad and general roles, team direction starts to take shape during this first call.

Motivation for working in defense comes up here too, usually indirectly. The recruiter explores what draws you to Anduril over other companies, which is their way of opening an honest conversation about the industry.

How should I prepare?

Have a specific, honest answer for why you want to work in defense. A generic response about impact or growth tends to fall apart once the recruiter asks follow-up questions.

Research Anduril's products before the call. Knowing the difference between Lattice, the drones, and the sensing systems shows you've looked past the company's reputation.

Technical and Hiring Manager Screen

What is the Anduril technical screen?

For software roles, the next step is a 60-minute coding round, usually with an engineer on HackerRank. The prompt is vague on purpose, built to make you ask clarifying questions before writing any code.

The coding question runs in phases. You solve a simple version first, then the constraints shift: arrays become uneven sizes, edge cases multiply, and some inputs become unsolvable, so you refactor your code as the scope grows.

For program and some senior roles, this stage is a screening conversation with a director or hiring manager instead. One technical program manager spoke with a director in the air defense org before the panel, an early skip-level conversation that's uncommon elsewhere.

Is it difficult?

Time and space complexity matter less here than your ability to produce working code through each phase. Candidates report that finishing every gate isn't required to advance; one thought they'd failed the screen and still moved forward.

Onsite Loop

What is the Anduril onsite loop?

The Anduril onsite is a final round of three to four 60-minute sessions. For the Anduril software engineer interview, it usually includes two coding rounds, a system design or object-oriented design round, and a behavioral conversation with a senior leader.

Coding rounds continue the collaborative, escalating style of the phone screen. You and the interviewer work through a question together in a shared editor, layering on constraints like obstacles in a pathfinding question as you go.

The object-oriented design round asks you to build a data structure from scratch with clean, separated methods. Interviewers care as much about how you structure and refactor your code as whether it runs.

What does the behavioral round involve?

The behavioral round is a detailed resume walkthrough led by a senior leader, often a founding-team member. Expect business-focused questions about what you worked on, whether you got return offers, how you'd rate your performance, and what your manager would say about you.

Defense motivation returns here, more pointed than with the recruiter. The interviewer often shares why they joined and stayed, treating the round as a mutual alignment check on whether the work fits you.

How does the loop work for program managers?

The Anduril technical program manager interview ends with a four-part panel: one area-heavy system design plus three behavioral rounds on program execution, ownership and deliverables, and decision-making. You can see a published walkthrough of this loop from a recent candidate.

The system design round is built around the team's actual work. One candidate had to design radar coverage for a moving ship, including where to place the radars and how the setup differs from a ground-based system. Strong program management preparation here means studying the team's area as much as general frameworks.

Anduril Interview Questions

These are examples of real interview questions asked at Anduril. Browse more in our Anduril interview question bank.

Coding

• Given two arrays representing teams of players, determine which team stands in front and which in back so that no player blocks a shorter player behind them, based on their height values.
• Extend that solution to handle teams of different sizes, where empty positions let players shift.
• Find the shortest distance between two points in 2D space using the Euclidean distance formula.
• Extend the solution to handle obstacles that block the direct path, then find the shortest path around them.
• Find the minimum range of tower sensors needed to cover a set of border crossings.

Object-Oriented and System Design

• Design and implement a doubly linked list from scratch with insert, delete, and search methods, handling edge cases at the head, tail, and middle.
• Design a radar tower model for a moving ship.
• Explain a typical computer vision pipeline.
• Design a distributed logging system.

Behavioral

• Walk me through your resume. For each role, what did you work on, what did you like, and did you get a return offer?
• How would you rate your performance at your last company, and what would your manager say about you?
• Tell me about a time you faced a moral or ethical dilemma at work.
• Tell me about a time you received negative feedback from your manager and how you handled it.
• How do you make important decisions?

Program and Technical Program Management

• How do you take a program from start to finish, from scoping and staffing through closeout?
• When a risk threatens to derail a program, how do you communicate it and handle it?
• Tell me about a time you took ownership of a project you weren't responsible for.
• When do you create a new process, and how do you design it?
• Tell me about a time you managed an end-to-end program.

Tips for Getting Hired at Anduril

Knowing how to get a job at Anduril starts with treating ambiguity as the point of the exercise.

1. Practice with unclear prompts. Anduril's coding questions are vague by design, so spend the first few minutes restating the question, confirming constraints, and naming edge cases before you write code. Building this habit through mock interviews pays off directly.
2. Build a real defense-industry answer. Your motivation for the work surfaces in more than one round, so have a specific reason ready that survives follow-up questions.
3. Go deep on the team's area. For experienced and program roles, the technical round is area-specific; one technical program manager prepped by studying air defense and how radar systems work. Pair that with structured system design practice.
4. Implement core data structures from scratch. The design round tests fundamentals, so rehearse building linked lists, queues, and deques with clean, separate methods. Our software engineering course walks through these.
5. Know your resume cold. The behavioral round digs into every role, so prepare honest specifics on outcomes, return offers, and manager feedback before you sit down for the behavioral round.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Anduril hire new graduates?

Yes. Anduril runs an early careers track for engineers with zero to two years of experience, and new grad loops test general fundamentals before matching you to a team.

Does Anduril offer remote positions?

Most roles are onsite, with a return-to-office expectation of around three days a week. Candidates report few fully remote engineering positions.

Does Anduril sponsor visas?

As a defense contractor, Anduril generally hires only US citizens and lawful permanent residents, and some roles require additional government authorizations.

Can I reapply if a team passes on me?

Sometimes the recruiter handles that for you. If you clear the loop but a team decides you fit better elsewhere, they may circulate your profile to other teams, which can lead to more interviews.

Prepare for Your Anduril Interview

• Review recently asked Anduril interview questions and answers from real candidates.
• Practice with our mock interview tools.
• Get role-specific Anduril interview guides.