Anduril Industries, a controversial California-based defense startup, is trying to hire engineering talent in Boston, but you might not know it from the company’s advertisements in South Station and along other Red Line subway stops.
The basic text “Work at Anduril.com” is covered with the word “Don’t” written in giant, graffiti-style, spray-painted letters. Other posters appear to have text blocked out by red, white, and blue spray paint.
It’s all part of the campaign, started in February, to attract a certain segment of the workforce, the company said. The aim is to emphasize Anduril’s culture of “hard, mission driven work” and “vocal support for American troops,” vice president of marketing Jeff Miller said in an email. “Anduril is not for everyone. That’s the point.”
The ads are running around Boston and Cambridge near the offices of major tech companies, Harvard, and MIT, Anduril said.
Anduril’s military projects range from autonomous drones that fly or operate underwater to an AI-powered system dubbed Lattice that uses sensors and cameras to track everything on a battlefield.
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The company currently lists more than 40 open jobs in the Boston area. Anduril opened an office near Fenway Park in Boston in 2020 and in Lexington near Lincoln Labs, after acquiring sensor tech startup Copious Imaging in 2021.
The “Don’t work at Anduril” campaign also placed posters in Seattle and Atlanta, advertised across LinkedIn, and produced a short film featuring a fictional disgruntled employee.
Anduril was founded in California in 2017 by a group including Palmer Luckey, who founded Oculus VR and sold it to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014. The name Anduril is a reference to the sword of Aragorn in the “Lord of the Rings” series by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Formed at the beginning of the first Trump administration when many tech companies opposed working on defense or weapons projects, Anduril has taken the opposite approach.
“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,” Luckey said in an appearance last year at Pepperdine University.
Aaron Pressman can be reached at aaron.pressman@globe.com. Follow him @ampressman.