Anduril

Prospect Profile

Anduril is a defense-tech company founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey and Brian Schimpf. It sits at the intersection of the two things that define the current defense procurement moment: software moving faster than the acquisition cycle, and hardware that has to be certified to standards written for slower times. Roadrunner (autonomous interceptor), Dive-LD (undersea drone), Bolt, and Omen — all built around Lattice OS, a shared operating system that fuses sensor data across air, sea, and undersea vehicles. Recent contracts: up to $20B from the Army, $86M from SOCOM for autonomy-systems integration.

The engineering culture is deliberately inverted from Lockheed or Raytheon. Hardware serves software. Field validation matters more than PowerPoints. Engineers own cross-functional scope — avionics and autonomy in one role is a job description, not an exception. That creates a real tension: iteration speed is the company's competitive advantage, but the aerospace quality standard (AS9100) and the airborne software certification standard (DO-178C) still run on largely manual processes.

Systems Engineering Surface

Lattice OS is the integration point for every Anduril platform. A change to the sensor fusion module affects Roadrunner's autonomy envelope, Dive-LD's comms stack, Omen's formation logic, and any third-party platform connected via the Lattice SDK. The coupling is real and structural — not siloed by program — which is exactly what makes traceability hard to do with per-program tools.

Job posting signals are useful here. Anduril is actively hiring “Systems Engineer — Requirements Manager” roles that explicitly mention SysML (a systems modeling language), SRR/PDR/CDR gate ownership (System Requirements Review, Preliminary Design Review, Critical Design Review — the formal checkpoints that defense programs must pass before proceeding), and traceability. “Test Infrastructure Lead” and “SITL/HITL automation” roles (software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop — running software against simulated or real hardware rigs) show the test infrastructure is sophisticated but disconnected from the requirements surface. The compliance evidence packaging is happening manually, after the fact.

Pain Points

Integration surprises across classified and unclassified domains.A Roadrunner payload change cascades to Lattice datalink APIs, autonomy logic, ground station firmware, and encrypted uplink protocols simultaneously. The classified/unclassified split means the same requirement lives in two tools that don't talk to each other. When one changes, someone syncs the other manually. That gap is where integration surprises live until hardware test.

Design review gates that become document marathons. SRR, PDR, and CDR gates are supposed to be technical discussions. At scale they become compliance evidence marathons: assembling PDFs from git logs, test reports, and hazard analyses spread across a dozen tools. Flow makes gate readiness a live query, not a week-long document assembly exercise.

DO-178C evidence generated retroactively.The airborne software certification standard requires demonstrating that code was reviewed and tests were planned before execution. In practice, that evidence gets reconstructed from git history after the fact. It's auditable but it's not the control the standard is designed to require. Flow makes it a side-effect of the CI run, not a tax on top of it.

Test results disconnected from requirements.Anduril runs sophisticated hardware-in-the-loop automation — real-time simulation rigs (Speedgoat, dSpace), and Crucible cross-domain test events that run Roadrunner, Lattice, and Dive-LD together. But the test results aren't linked to specific requirements. “Did the test cover this requirement?” currently requires manual cross-referencing.

Flow Integrations at Anduril Scale

GitHub to compliance evidence automatically.A Lattice module commit triggers the GitHub Actions test suite (software-in-the-loop). Flow receives the test results, updates the requirement's verification record, and auto-stamps the DO-178C “code reviewed + tested” checklist item with the PR number as evidence. The compliance package becomes a side-effect of development, not a separate deliverable.

Physics simulations as live design values.Structural stress simulations (ANSYS) for Roadrunner's wings, depth pressure models for Dive-LD — results push to Flow as design values. When actual margins degrade below requirements, Flow flags downstream requirements automatically. The link between simulation result and certification requirement is explicit and queryable.

Hardware rig test results auto-linked to requirements. Speedgoat and dSpace hardware rigs run Lattice autonomy stack tests against real hardware. Each test run links to the requirements it covers. Crucible cross-domain events — Roadrunner + Lattice + Dive-LD comms tested together — populate traceability across platform boundaries in a single test event.

Gate readiness as a live dashboard. The SRR/PDR/CDR checklist lives in Flow. As requirements finalize, tests pass, and hazard analyses sign off, the gate form auto-populates. The review committee sees a 94% readiness score before they walk in the room. The two open items are specific, not buried in a spreadsheet. Technical review replaces administrative ceremony.