Just wrapped my full Anduril loop for an ops/program management role and want to share what the behavioral rounds were actually like. Spoiler: it's less about Amazon-style leadership principles and more about mission fit and operating in ambiguity.
I had two behavioral rounds. One with a hiring manager, one with a senior IC from a cross-functional team. Both were STAR-format but the questions were notably different from what I'd been prepping for.
Questions I got (paraphrased): Tell me about a time you had to make a decision with incomplete information and a hard deadline. What did you decide and what happened? Give me an example of a project where the original goal was wrong. How did you figure that out and what did you do? How do you handle working on something where the stakes are high and mistakes have real-world consequences? (This one is clearly mission-aligned.) Describe a time you had to push back on leadership or a senior stakeholder. What was the outcome? Tell me about a time you built something that didn't exist before, without a playbook.
A few things I noticed. They pushed hard on 'what did YOU specifically do' versus what the team did. I slipped into 'we' a few times and got gently redirected. They want to understand your individual judgment, not team outcomes.
The mission-alignment question came up both in the behavioral round and in the closing conversation. They genuinely seem to care whether you believe in what the company is doing (defense technology, autonomous systems). If you're uncomfortable with the mission, this probably isn't the place. If you ARE aligned, be specific about why. 'I want to work on hard problems' is not specific enough.
Prep advice: Practice articulating your personal decision-making process under pressure, not just outcomes. Anduril's behavioral bar felt more like a quality-of-judgment screen than a culture-fit screen.