Materials Engineer Jobs in California
Materials Engineer jobs in California represent one of the most active markets in the country, with demand concentrated in aerospace, semiconductors, defense systems, and advanced manufacturing at every level from entry-level lab positions through principal and senior engineering roles. The largest hiring centers are the Los Angeles basin, the San Francisco Bay Area, and San Diego, where employers such as Northrop Grumman, Applied Materials, and Raytheon Technologies have major operations. The most sought-after specialties in California listings include polymer and composite materials, thin-film and semiconductor process materials, and failure analysis. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
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Showing 5 of 81+ Materials Engineer jobs
Anduril Industries is a defense technology company with a mission to transform U.S. and allied military capabilities with advanced technology. By bringing the expertise, technology, and business model of the 21st century's most innovative companies to the defense industry, Anduril is changing how military systems are designed, built and sold. Anduril's family of systems is powered by Lattice OS, an AI-powered operating system that turns thousands of data streams into a realtime, 3D command and control center. As the world enters an era of strategic competition, Anduril is committed to bringing cutting-edge autonomy, AI, computer vision, sensor fusion, and networking technology to the military in months, not years.
About the Role
Anduril designs and fields systems across an unusually broad materials portfolio. Advancing our products depends on trusted, analysis-ready material data across this full range of materials, generated and governed at the pace our programs move. This role owns the enterprise materials database: building it, filling it, governing it, and making it the place Anduril's design values come from.
This role is your opportunity to establish the infrastructure, methodology, and governance that turn materials characterization and qualification into a defined workflow — and build the system that holds the output. You'll decide what a material record looks like, how test data gets into it, what makes a value trustworthy enough to release, and how the rest of engineering consumes it. It's your opportunity to set a technical standard and get an organization to adopt it. Shape how materials engineering gets done, not just what gets tested. You'll build the foundation and scale it.
What You'll Do
- Build the Materials Database. Own the materials database end to end — data model and schema, units and provenance, revision control, access, and release. Define how a material, a form, a process, a lot, and a test result relate to one another so a design value can always be traced back to the specimens behind it. Stand up the ingest paths that feed it: test lab deliverables, LIMS and test-frame output, supplier certs, and legacy data scattered across spreadsheets and program drives. Establish the criteria and pipeline that let advanced and non-standard materials be characterized once, correctly, and reused across programs.
- Own the Design Allowables Standard. Define and own how test data becomes a defensible design value across Anduril's business lines—statistical basis (A-basis / B-basis, pooling, reduction methods), acceptance and inclusion criteria, traceability, versioning, and controlled release. Your methodology becomes the baseline every program's materials data is held to.
- Establish Fatigue and Fracture-Critical Methodology. Define and implement a standardized approach to fatigue-life assessment and damage tolerance, including the qualification path for using materials in fracture-critical applications, so high-consequence design decisions rest on a consistent, defensible basis.
- Extract Value from Lifecycle Material Data. Capture the material property and certification data generated across our supply chain into the database, so every cert that clears receiving inspection becomes a data point rather than a PDF in a folder. Supplier, process, and lot-to-lot variability becomes a queryable digital thread of material traceability and enables faster decision-making through quantified material and process metrics.
- Serve as the Cross-Business-Line Technical Authority. Be the subject-matter expert for materials allowables and data across the portfolio. Partner with design, analysis, test, and quality to align on data requirements, support design and qualification reviews, and drive adoption of the right-sized solution for a program.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Materials Science, Materials Engineering, Metallurgy or a related field
- 2+ years of materials and process engineering experience in aerospace, defense, or a comparably rigorous domain
- Expertise in materials characterization and design allowables development, including statistical basis (e.g., MMPDS / CMH-17-style methods)
- Experience building or owning a materials data system — schema or data model design, ingest from test and supplier sources, units and provenance handling, revision control, and traceability from design value back to specimen
- Experience with material qualification and characterization: mechanical and thermal testing, and translating results into usable design values
- Proven ability to set a technical standard and drive adoption across teams
- Strong technical writing—your methodology and specifications are clear, unambiguous, and actionable
- Ability to manage multiple priorities and drive progress independently in a fast-paced environment
- Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Top Secret security clearance
Preferred Qualifications
- Master's degree in Materials Science, Materials Engineering, Metallurgy or a related field
- Direct experience with building a materials database for aerospace, propulsion, or defense applications
- Active U.S. Secret or Top Secret security clearance
- Hands-on experience with scoping and executing a characterization campaign from scratch
- Background in fatigue and fracture mechanics, especially for fracture-critical or damage-tolerant components
- Experience with materials data management / materials informatics platforms and partnering with software/data teams to build data pipelines
- Direct experience with advanced or non-standard materials—high-temperature alloys, advanced composites, or additively-manufactured materials
- Experience integrating or standardizing materials data across disparate or legacy sources
The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations. Highly competitive equity grants are included in the majority of full time offers; and are considered part of Anduril's total compensation package. Additionally, Anduril offers top-tier benefits for full-time employees, including:
Benefits
At Anduril, we invest in our people. Our comprehensive, competitive benefits package (available at little to no cost to employees) ensures you're supported in health, recovery, and whatever comes next. For more information, Explore Our Benefits.
Protecting Yourself from Recruitment Scams
Anduril is committed to maintaining the integrity of our Talent acquisition process and the security of our candidates. We've observed a rise in sophisticated phishing and fraudulent schemes where individuals impersonate Anduril representatives, luring job seekers with false interviews or job offers. These scammers often attempt to extract payment or sensitive personal information.
To ensure your safety and help you navigate your job search with confidence, please keep the following critical points in mind:
No Financial Requests: Anduril will never solicit payment or demand personal financial details (such as banking information, credit card numbers, or social security numbers) at any stage of our hiring process. Our legitimate recruitment is entirely free for candidates.
- Please always verify communications:
- Direct from Anduril: If you receive an email from one of our recruiters, it will only come from an @anduril.com address.
- Via Agency Partner: If contacted by a recruiting agency for an Anduril role, their email will clearly identify their agency. If you suspect any suspicious activity, please verify the agency's authenticity by reaching out to contact@anduril.com.
Exercise Caution with Unsolicited Outreach: If you receive any communication that appears suspicious, contains grammatical errors, or makes unusual requests, do not engage. Always confirm the sender's email domain is @anduril.com before providing any personal information or clicking on links.
What to Do If You Suspect Fraud: Should you encounter any questionable or fraudulent outreach claiming to be from Anduril, please report it immediately to contact@anduril.com. Your proactive caution is invaluable in protecting your personal information and upholding the security and trustworthiness of our recruitment efforts.
Data Privacy
To view Anduril's candidate data privacy policy, please visit https://anduril.com/applicant-privacy-notice/.
By submitting your application, you consent to Anduril Industries using a third-party service provider to conduct pre-employment risk, integrity, and due diligence screening and assessing potential risks as part of your application process. This third-party service provider provides risk-intelligence services that may include analysis of sanctions and watchlists, adverse media, public-record information, and other lawful open-source or commercial data sources. This third-party service provider does not act as a consumer reporting agency. Use of this provider helps to ensure compliance with applicable laws and protect technology, intellectual property, and organizational security.
Anduril Industries is a defense technology company with a mission to transform U.S. and allied military capabilities with advanced technology. By bringing the expertise, technology, and business model of the 21st century's most innovative companies to the defense industry, Anduril is changing how military systems are designed, built and sold. Anduril's family of systems is powered by Lattice OS, an AI-powered operating system that turns thousands of data streams into a realtime, 3D command and control center. As the world enters an era of strategic competition, Anduril is committed to bringing cutting-edge autonomy, AI, computer vision, sensor fusion, and networking technology to the military in months, not years.
About the Role
Anduril designs and fields systems across an unusually broad materials portfolio. Advancing our products depends on trusted, analysis-ready material data across this full range of materials, generated and governed at the pace our programs move. This role owns the enterprise materials database: building it, filling it, governing it, and making it the place Anduril's design values come from.
This role is your opportunity to establish the infrastructure, methodology, and governance that turn materials characterization and qualification into a defined workflow — and build the system that holds the output. You'll decide what a material record looks like, how test data gets into it, what makes a value trustworthy enough to release, and how the rest of engineering consumes it. It's your opportunity to set a technical standard and get an organization to adopt it. Shape how materials engineering gets done, not just what gets tested. You'll build the foundation and scale it.
What You'll Do
- Build the Materials Database. Own the materials database end to end — data model and schema, units and provenance, revision control, access, and release. Define how a material, a form, a process, a lot, and a test result relate to one another so a design value can always be traced back to the specimens behind it. Stand up the ingest paths that feed it: test lab deliverables, LIMS and test-frame output, supplier certs, and legacy data scattered across spreadsheets and program drives. Establish the criteria and pipeline that let advanced and non-standard materials be characterized once, correctly, and reused across programs.
- Own the Design Allowables Standard. Define and own how test data becomes a defensible design value across Anduril's business lines—statistical basis (A-basis / B-basis, pooling, reduction methods), acceptance and inclusion criteria, traceability, versioning, and controlled release. Your methodology becomes the baseline every program's materials data is held to.
- Establish Fatigue and Fracture-Critical Methodology. Define and implement a standardized approach to fatigue-life assessment and damage tolerance, including the qualification path for using materials in fracture-critical applications, so high-consequence design decisions rest on a consistent, defensible basis.
- Extract Value from Lifecycle Material Data. Capture the material property and certification data generated across our supply chain into the database, so every cert that clears receiving inspection becomes a data point rather than a PDF in a folder. Supplier, process, and lot-to-lot variability becomes a queryable digital thread of material traceability and enables faster decision-making through quantified material and process metrics.
- Serve as the Cross-Business-Line Technical Authority. Be the subject-matter expert for materials allowables and data across the portfolio. Partner with design, analysis, test, and quality to align on data requirements, support design and qualification reviews, and drive adoption of the right-sized solution for a program.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Materials Science, Materials Engineering, Metallurgy or a related field
- 2+ years of materials and process engineering experience in aerospace, defense, or a comparably rigorous domain
- Expertise in materials characterization and design allowables development, including statistical basis (e.g., MMPDS / CMH-17-style methods)
- Experience building or owning a materials data system — schema or data model design, ingest from test and supplier sources, units and provenance handling, revision control, and traceability from design value back to specimen
- Experience with material qualification and characterization: mechanical and thermal testing, and translating results into usable design values
- Proven ability to set a technical standard and drive adoption across teams
- Strong technical writing—your methodology and specifications are clear, unambiguous, and actionable
- Ability to manage multiple priorities and drive progress independently in a fast-paced environment
- Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Top Secret security clearance
Preferred Qualifications
- Master's degree in Materials Science, Materials Engineering, Metallurgy or a related field
- Direct experience with building a materials database for aerospace, propulsion, or defense applications
- Active U.S. Secret or Top Secret security clearance
- Hands-on experience with scoping and executing a characterization campaign from scratch
- Background in fatigue and fracture mechanics, especially for fracture-critical or damage-tolerant components
- Experience with materials data management / materials informatics platforms and partnering with software/data teams to build data pipelines
- Direct experience with advanced or non-standard materials—high-temperature alloys, advanced composites, or additively-manufactured materials
- Experience integrating or standardizing materials data across disparate or legacy sources
The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations. Highly competitive equity grants are included in the majority of full time offers; and are considered part of Anduril's total compensation package. Additionally, Anduril offers top-tier benefits for full-time employees, including:
Benefits
At Anduril, we invest in our people. Our comprehensive, competitive benefits package (available at little to no cost to employees) ensures you're supported in health, recovery, and whatever comes next. For more information, Explore Our Benefits.
Protecting Yourself from Recruitment Scams
Anduril is committed to maintaining the integrity of our Talent acquisition process and the security of our candidates. We've observed a rise in sophisticated phishing and fraudulent schemes where individuals impersonate Anduril representatives, luring job seekers with false interviews or job offers. These scammers often attempt to extract payment or sensitive personal information.
To ensure your safety and help you navigate your job search with confidence, please keep the following critical points in mind:
No Financial Requests: Anduril will never solicit payment or demand personal financial details (such as banking information, credit card numbers, or social security numbers) at any stage of our hiring process. Our legitimate recruitment is entirely free for candidates.
- Please always verify communications:
- Direct from Anduril: If you receive an email from one of our recruiters, it will only come from an @anduril.com address.
- Via Agency Partner: If contacted by a recruiting agency for an Anduril role, their email will clearly identify their agency. If you suspect any suspicious activity, please verify the agency's authenticity by reaching out to contact@anduril.com.
Exercise Caution with Unsolicited Outreach: If you receive any communication that appears suspicious, contains grammatical errors, or makes unusual requests, do not engage. Always confirm the sender's email domain is @anduril.com before providing any personal information or clicking on links.
What to Do If You Suspect Fraud: Should you encounter any questionable or fraudulent outreach claiming to be from Anduril, please report it immediately to contact@anduril.com. Your proactive caution is invaluable in protecting your personal information and upholding the security and trustworthiness of our recruitment efforts.
Data Privacy
To view Anduril's candidate data privacy policy, please visit https://anduril.com/applicant-privacy-notice/.
By submitting your application, you consent to Anduril Industries using a third-party service provider to conduct pre-employment risk, integrity, and due diligence screening and assessing potential risks as part of your application process. This third-party service provider provides risk-intelligence services that may include analysis of sanctions and watchlists, adverse media, public-record information, and other lawful open-source or commercial data sources. This third-party service provider does not act as a consumer reporting agency. Use of this provider helps to ensure compliance with applicable laws and protect technology, intellectual property, and organizational security.
See All 81 Materials Engineer Jobs in California
Find roles in California that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Materials Engineer JobsMaterials Engineer Jobs by City in California
Where California roles are concentrated, by current openings.
Materials Engineer Job Market in California
A snapshot from current California openings, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring
- Tesla12
- Relativity Space5
- Apple4
- Freeform3
- General Atomics3
Top Industries Hiring
- Staffing & Recruiting
What California Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in materials engineer jobs across California.
- Bachelor's degree in materials science, metallurgy, or a closely related engineering discipline
- Experience with materials characterization techniques such as SEM, XRD, or EDS
- Proficiency in failure analysis, root cause investigation, and corrective action documentation
- Familiarity with aerospace or semiconductor process specifications and industry standards such as ASTM
- Ability to obtain or maintain a U.S. security clearance for defense-sector roles in California
- Experience with CAD or simulation tools for materials modeling and process development
Materials Engineer Jobs in California: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you become a materials engineer in California?
The standard path is a bachelor's degree in materials science, metallurgical engineering, or a closely related field, followed by entry-level work in one of California's core industries such as aerospace or semiconductors. California does not require a state-issued license specifically for materials engineers, but engineers offering services directly to the public may pursue registration as a Professional Engineer through the California Board for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, and Geologists. Relevant certifications in failure analysis, welding, or nondestructive testing strengthen most California applications.
How much do materials engineers make in California?
Materials engineers in California earn a median of about $128,470 a year, based on May 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data, ranging from around $82,460 for the lowest 10% to over $183,880 for the top 10%. Pay rises with experience, specialty, and employer.
Which companies hire materials engineers in California?
Employers hiring materials engineers in California right now include Tesla, Relativity Space, and Apple, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. California's concentration of aerospace primes, semiconductor equipment makers, and defense contractors means demand for materials engineers is distributed across both large campuses and specialized mid-size firms throughout the state.
Which California cities have the most materials engineer jobs?
Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Palo Alto consistently hold the most materials engineer openings in California. The Los Angeles area drives volume through its dense aerospace and defense manufacturing base, the Bay Area through its semiconductor and advanced materials industries, and San Diego through defense research and biomedical device firms that require specialized materials expertise.
Are there remote materials engineer jobs in California?
Yes, but they're rare. Materials engineering is largely hands-on work involving lab equipment, physical testing, and manufacturing floor support, which limits remote options by the nature of the role. About 31% of materials engineer openings tied to California are remote or hybrid as of November 2026, and those positions tend to be in data analysis, materials modeling, specification writing, or supplier quality management rather than direct lab or production work.
How can I get hired as a materials engineer in California with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path is applying to intern-to-hire and new-graduate programs at large California aerospace and semiconductor employers, which regularly recruit from California State University campuses and UC system engineering programs. Northrop Grumman, Applied Materials, and similar companies run structured new-grad rotational or associate engineer programs. Adjacent roles such as materials technician, lab analyst, or quality inspector at California manufacturers are common stepping stones, and a senior capstone project, published failure analysis, or relevant coursework portfolio gives candidates a meaningful edge.
Where can I find and apply to materials engineer jobs in California?
You can find and apply to materials engineer jobs in California on Migrate Mate, which lists current California openings across aerospace, semiconductor, defense, and advanced manufacturing employers. Find roles that fit your background and apply directly to the employers posting them.
See All 81 Materials Engineer Jobs in California
Find roles in California that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Materials Engineer Jobs