I just finished my Anduril new grad / entry level interview process and got an offer for a software engineer role in Costa Mesa. Took it. Wanted to write this up because when I was searching for prep resources for specifically the new grad loop I mostly found information aimed at more senior roles or very vague LinkedIn posts.
First: Anduril does recruit on campus and from new grad pipelines, but not as aggressively as FAANG. I found them through a university career fair in fall 2025. The recruiter was refreshingly direct about what the role actually involves.
Format for new grad SWE: Online coding challenge: 2 problems, 90 minutes. Both were LeetCode medium difficulty, graph traversal and a DP question. Nothing exotic. Technical phone screen: 45-60 minutes. One coding problem (medium, done on CoderPad), then design discussion about a project from my resume. They asked me to explain a system end-to-end, what I'd change now, and how it would behave under load. As a new grad they don't expect you to have designed a distributed system. They want to see how you think, not the answer. Onsite (3 rounds): two coding rounds and one behavioral/culture round.
The two coding rounds were not harder than the phone screen in terms of problem difficulty. They're evaluating cleanliness of implementation, how you handle edge cases you catch as you go, and whether you talk through your thinking. I got stuck on one problem and said so, then talked through what I knew and what I didn't. That seemed fine.
The culture round as a new grad: this one surprised me. It's not "tell me about teamwork." They asked me why I wanted to work at a defense company specifically, whether I'd thought about what kinds of systems I was okay contributing to, and how I handle situations where I disagree with a direction. Be honest, not performative. They can tell.
Prep resources that actually helped: Blind 75 on LeetCode for the coding (get medium-level solid, don't obsess over hard), and MIT OpenCourseWare lectures on distributed systems basics so you can talk about replication and fault tolerance without sounding lost.
Comp for new grad 2026: base around 155k in Costa Mesa, equity on top. Not FAANG base numbers but the equity is meaningful if you believe in the company.