Anduril Industries, a defense startup based in California, is seeking engineering talent in Boston through an unusual advertising campaign. The company’s ads, found in locations like South Station and along the Red Line subway, feature the phrase “Don’t work at Anduril.com,” often with the word “Don’t” spray-painted in large, graffiti-style letters.
This campaign, which began in February, aims to attract a specific segment of the workforce. According to Jeff Miller, Anduril’s vice president of marketing, the goal is to highlight the company’s culture of “hard, mission-driven work” and “vocal support for American troops.” He added, “Anduril is not for everyone. That’s the point.”
The advertisements are strategically placed near major tech companies and universities, including Harvard and MIT, in both Boston and Cambridge, the company stated.
Anduril is involved in various military projects, ranging from autonomous drones to an AI-powered system called Lattice, which uses sensors and cameras for battlefield surveillance.
The company currently has over 40 open positions listed in the Boston area. Anduril established an office near Fenway Park in Boston in 2020, followed by a Lexington location near Lincoln Labs after acquiring the sensor tech startup Copious Imaging in 2021.
The “Don’t work at Anduril” campaign has also extended to Seattle and Atlanta, with additional advertising on LinkedIn and a short film featuring a fictional disgruntled employee.
Anduril was founded in California in 2017 by a group including Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR, which was sold to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014. The company’s name, Anduril, is derived from the sword of Aragorn in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
Formed at the start of the first Trump administration when many tech companies avoided defense projects, Anduril adopted a different approach. Luckey, speaking last year at Pepperdine University, stated, “You need people like me who are sick in that way and who don’t lose any sleep making tools of violence in order to preserve freedom.”
