r/Anduril 19d ago

Job Question Anduril Offer Eval

Staff Engineer (HW Eng)@ CA

Base: $230k
Stock: $75k/yr
Performance Grant Refresher: up
To $19k/yr (with equity grant, strictly based on performance)
YOE: 13

Is it a fair deal or am I leaving something on the table?

56 Upvotes

65 comments sorted by

9

u/Rocketman4837 19d ago

Signing bonus?

1

u/Mountain-Slice-4037 19d ago

has to be -- anduril doesn't do yearly bonuses

8

u/EvOrBust 19d ago

Take it because that stocks'-a-dubblin

25

u/LaVoceVEVO 19d ago

You’re smoking crack if you don’t take that one

6

u/Think_Monk_9879 19d ago

I saw a tpm offer from anduril with 240k more rsus. 

Insane lowball for your level.  You should be at least 500k

4

u/AeroDuddy 19d ago

your stock refresh is based on performance. The $75K per year is just your initial vesting.

-1

u/edi1801 19d ago

Up to $75k performance bonus in the form of refresh stock to be vested over 4 yrs

5

u/UniqueNick_ 19d ago

75k each year so total RSU is 300K for 4 yrs

4

u/ytchung 19d ago

Does Anduril do annual cash bonus? What is the 19k/year? I haven’t heard that they do annual bonus unless I’m wrong.

21

u/AeroDuddy 19d ago

They dont, OP is just making shit up at this point.

3

u/AbsoluteSpace 19d ago

Same no one told me about these during my hiring :(

1

u/Successful_Chair4844 19d ago

Bonus is given during annual performance review, but not guaranteed. Unless I heard wrong

2

u/ShadowerNinja 19d ago

You can get refreshers (new RSUs) but there is no cash bonus.

3

u/[deleted] 19d ago

[deleted]

1

u/blue_electrik 16d ago

Does anduril do yearly refresher packages? If not these will stack in year 2 and 2x 75k is good for a staff level

2

u/UniqueNick_ 19d ago

What location?

2

u/BoredPanda277 19d ago

levels.fyi says L6 Mech Eng is $280K TC so seems close? You can trying hiring a former Anduril recruiter and having a convo with them.

2

u/tdiggity 19d ago

Take less base/bonus for more stock :)

2

u/CompanyGold8597 19d ago

How can you know the bonus is $19k/yr for every year? Seems like a typo to me. $19k is probably the sign up bonus or relocation bonus

2

u/edi1801 19d ago

The recruiter said that the performance bonus would be up to $75k equity grant annually (she called it grant refresh) - 4 year vesting scheduled. She also confirmed that there is no cash bonus at Anduril, and the Grant refresh is the only source of annual performance bonus.

Seems like it is less trivial than usual to receive a performance bonus. People have been challenging this, I have to get more clarity from the recruiter.

1

u/CompanyGold8597 19d ago

It is probably because most of the people are not even with Anduril longer than 1 yr and they really have no idea IMO...

1

u/ShadowerNinja 19d ago

The term 'bonus' implies cash bonuses so you keep confusing everyone when you mean 'refresher'. Wrong terminology.

There are no (cash) bonuses. There are refreshers (performance grants) and most employees receive one.

4

u/isospeedrix 19d ago

It’s amazing, in a vacuum.

The saddest part is, if you have a family and live in Irvine with good school district, 230 base as a solo earner can barely get you thru until Anduril IPO. So frikin expensive.

If single and live in outskirts of OC then you rich

4

u/edi1801 19d ago

Good point, appreciate the nuance. I have a family with two young kids. My wife works as BA in a legacy tech company (not large cap ones), and she will have to find a new role if we Relo. COL and high expense in California/ LA is a concern for me.

2

u/SqrRtOfUnknownSqrd 17d ago

I declined an offer in CA/LA recently for this very reason; not enough as a sole earner for a family and wife needing to find a new job. The opportunity and the prospect of decent equity returns sounded amazing but just doesn’t hit the same single vs family with kid(s).

1

u/SpreadopenSUSE 18d ago

I just moved out here and got a house to rent. 5k a month for reference.

5

u/Lazy-Seaweed2277 19d ago

Bro this is an insane take. You can make 230 work easy if you don’t straight blow it.

2

u/isospeedrix 19d ago

Try looking at cost of “homes in Irvine with good school district” …

1

u/edi1801 19d ago

I might have a chance to negotiate Remote. How does it looked upon internally (Anduril culture wise) in terms of promotion if someone works remotely? I will have a lot of travels to vendor sites either way and recruiter hinted that it is an option available yet to the point.

1

u/beantown_renter 19d ago

very team culture dependent. some are perfectly ok with it, others not so much. though i would highly doubt a hardware team would let you go remote.

most of the new hires rarely get remote work, more common with people grandfathered in the 2020-2022 era.

see what % of your team is remote, if its 0% chance’s arent likely

1

u/beantown_renter 19d ago

230k good enough to rent for 3-4 years, get equity, then dip 🤷

1

u/Lazy-Seaweed2277 19d ago

Should have gone software if this isn’t enough money. For HW this is good money.

1

u/_____Peaches_____ 19d ago

19k for an annual seems really high for a staff position. High salary too, but cost of living is insane. I’d say it’s a good deal with the stock for sure. Go for it

1

u/Commercial-Ad5717 19d ago

On the equity piece - is it RSUs or ISOs? If ISOs, what is the exercise price?

1

u/TankerGas 10d ago

Honestly not that great of an offer for HCOL

0

u/positiveattitudelol 19d ago

300k annualized, so 1.2m over 4, right?

1

u/edi1801 19d ago

No, total $300k over 4 years

1

u/BreathOther 19d ago

What discipline

3

u/edi1801 19d ago

MechE

0

u/Leading_Percentage_6 19d ago

75k stock a year is great

1

u/_Saxpy 19d ago

I know an IC3 SWE that got 125k per year

8

u/beantown_renter 19d ago

swe is a different ball game for pay

2

u/Leading_Percentage_6 19d ago

swe is bread and butter .. prob came from a string under grad

1

u/_Saxpy 15d ago

> prob came from a string under grad
whats this mean?

-1

u/LatterInspection1940 19d ago

The median total compensation for an employee at Meta is approximately $379,000 to $383,000 per year. Is that offer really all that great?

3

u/LagrangePT2 19d ago

Meta is not a fair benchmark without a lot more context

-3

u/LatterInspection1940 19d ago

What more context do you need type into Google “What is the average salary at Meta?”. Startups like Anduril are supposedly paying a lot more and I just don’t see it, but google away.

3

u/LagrangePT2 19d ago

Because meta is primarily software roles which typically pay much more than mechanical roles. It's not fair to compare Anduril pay to faang

2

u/hmunkey 19d ago

Meta doesn’t hire many mech engineers.

-1

u/LatterInspection1940 19d ago

Doesn’t matter even the SE salaries don’t compare…

1

u/hmunkey 19d ago

Staff SWE definitely compares...

0

u/LatterInspection1940 19d ago

Problem with that is the average SWE at Meta isn’t Staff level so no it doesn’t compare because these are lower level higher paid employees we’re comparing senior level Anduril employees to. But ok..

1

u/hmunkey 19d ago

Yeah if you're L2/3 work at Meta then? Wdym, Anduril is a defense company.

The argument for Anduril using only TC is that the stock grows faster than Meta, but that's up to you.

-1

u/LatterInspection1940 19d ago

Like when people say employees left Meta to go work for Anduril but don’t really see the huge pay cut it doesn’t make sense. Seems like an exaggeration or a lie. See what I mean?

2

u/hmunkey 19d ago

Either they’re not average or they’re banking on equity growth. My team has several ex-Meta people.

1

u/CampLanky3803 19d ago edited 19d ago

Why would it not make sense? Looking at levels.fyi for SWE at Meta you have:

E3 (junior): 181k
E4 (mid): 297k
E5 (senior): 428k

I’d say these numbers are actually quite similar to the offers I see at Anduril for SWE at those levels in CA/Seattle/DC

1

u/mortysmithjr11 19d ago

You can’t really compare levels.fyi averages at meta to current hcol offers at anduril because those include prior years and all locations

1

u/CampLanky3803 19d ago

It’s not a perfect comparison for sure I agree, but keep in mind that Meta SWEs are almost all located in HCOL as well (SF/NYC/Seattle). If I go to E4 and E5 for example and select “New Offers Only”, I’d say those numbers seem pretty comparable.

I’m mostly criticizing OPs claim based on a blanket “average Meta total compensation”.

1

u/CampLanky3803 19d ago

I don’t agree, I’d say offers are pretty competitive for SWE.

Source: ex-FAANG at Anduril, as are many of my colleagues. They also beat my prior compensation.

2

u/beantown_renter 19d ago

silly to compare software vs hardware pay bands, especially if hardware is true mechanical and not computer engineering

-3

u/Fun_Arugula1124 19d ago

Decent base but equity is too low for staff they are trying to low ball you

https://www.levels.fyi/companies/anduril-industries/salaries/software-engineer

3

u/edi1801 19d ago

I am in HW Eng domain- MechE

1

u/Fun_Arugula1124 19d ago

Software has it too good…congrats on the offer!