---
title: 'Founding Front-end Engineer at Smack Technologies'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founding-front-end-engineer-smack-technologies-los-angeles-xmb43sfq9r43'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-05'
---

# Founding Front-end Engineer at Smack Technologies

- **Company:** Smack Technologies
- **Location:** Los Angeles, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2024-04-24
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/smacktechnologies-com/am9icG9zdDpioj2PqFjgcp9UK7Aag1nw

## Job description

Employment Type:

- Full-time
- Hybrid/On-site: Los Angeles, CA (will consider remote and/or relocation)

As a Frontend Engineer at Smack, you will build the UI for complex problems. Our product leverages AI and mathematical optimization. For it to work, the UI must be exceptional at two things: First, it needs to make planning collaborative and simple. Maybe even fun. Basically, be the opposite of planning in PowerPoint. Second, it needs to enable human-in-the-loop autonomy. The UI is the portal for decision-makers to interact with Smack’s system at high-value human touchpoints and to audit the system's logic. You will build the visualization tools and dashboards to make this possible.

As part of our founding team, you’ll have strong ownership over major parts of our system. You’ll help design the systems, and choose the technologies.

What You’ll Do:

- Design, build, and deploy a collaborative UI that allows users to rapidly build tasks and prioritize thousands of items.
- Design, build, and deploy a course of action (COA) builder UI that allows users to compare plans
- Work side by side with end-users to rapidly iterate on the product. This role requires travel to user sites.
- Rapidly prototype UIs to create great user experiences before building high-quality production versions.
- Build a high-quality system with good software engineering practices and ensure everything is well-documented.
- Ensure your code is well-tested (but not obsessively going for 100% test coverage).

Our Tech Stack:

- Typescript
- Svelte 5 / SvelteKit (Vite, Jest, Storybook and/or whatever other tools you help choose)
- Modern CSS with Tailwind
- Our backend is Python and FastAPI
- As an early-stage startup, we are trying to find the right balance of enough process to have high-quality software that doesn’t require heroics to maintain, but not too much process that would waste time. You’ll help to determine this balance.

Required Qualifications:

- Bachelors in Computer Science, Operations Research, or another relevant technical degree (or strong demonstrated professional software engineering skills–the bar for non-traditional developers is high, but we’re open to folks without degrees if you know what you’re doing)
- Proficient in Typescript, CSS, and modern web development
- Eligible to obtain a TS/SCI security clearance

Preferred Qualifications:

- Experience with Svelte (or enjoy learning new frameworks)
- Experience with developing collaboration tools (especially with CRDTs and Yjs)
- You love working on interesting tech problems–if you’ve built your own personal or open source projects that’s great.
- You like improving UI/UX and other aspects of the product.
- Have worked with mapping or other geographic APIs
- Active TS/SCI security clearance

Who You Are:

- You are mission-driven.
- You love working on a team where we collaborate to solve a huge external challenge.
- You want to own taking a product UI from zero to one.
- You savor a good challenge. We’re a start-up. We have many.
- You work well with others. As a startup we’ll have to work together to figure out a lot of unknowns.

Our expected range is $120k-$170k depending on experience. Good health plans, 401(k) dental, vision, etc. Meaningful stock options in what we hope will be a successful startup with founders who have had successful exits and deep domain expertise.

One of our major customers will be the US DoD and you need to be eligible for a TS/SCI clearance (as I understand it, this includes being a US Citizen with a clean record).

We don’t yet have an office, but plan on opening one around West Los Angeles. We’d like the team to be primarily LA-based with a hybrid setup: early stage startups tend to work best with some time together. But for the right person, we’d be open to remote (with travel to visit) or Oahu-based.

## About Smack Technologies

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Smack Technologies builds domain-specific AI models using deep reinforcement learning to deliver AI-enabled decision-making for modern warfare, compressing military planning from months to minutes.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series B; $61M raised in August 2026)
- **Headquarters**: Texas, USA (with offices in Washington, D.C. and El Segundo, California)
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Andy Markoff (CEO), Clint Alanis (COO & Co-Founder), Dan Gould (Head of Strategy & Co-Founder)

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Defense technology / National security AI
- Target customers: U.S. Department of War, allied militaries, and partners (B2G / Government)
- Mission: Deliver Decision Dominance to the Department of War, its allies, and partners by compressing the OODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) using deep reinforcement learning.

## Products & Services
- **Omega** – Decision platform for commanders that leverages proprietary AI models to convert multimodal data into structured decision support, accelerating campaign planning from months to minutes.
- **Alpha** – Decision platform for the tactical edge combining lightweight AI models with proprietary hardware to extend Omega’s reasoning to frontline units and autonomous systems, enabling intelligent autonomy in DDIL (Degraded, Disconnected, Intermittent, Limited) environments.
- **Domain-Specific AI Models** – Proprietary deep reinforcement learning models trained in a synthetic environment reflecting the physics, constraints, and human expertise of war. Architecture combines graph networks, diffusion models, and transformers for tactical inference.
- **Omega Product Suite** – Customer-specific applications (e.g., Fires, Logistics) that analyze multimodal data streams, reason over the analysis, and optimize decisions for commanders.
- **Alpha Product Suite** – Hardware-software stack for edge deployment, fusing local sensor data with campaign-level context to enable command-informed decisions and orchestration of autonomous systems even without comms access.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total disclosed funding of $93M as of August 2026 ($32M Seed/Series A in March 2026, $61M Series B in August 2026)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not explicitly named in search results, but contracts with JFN (Joint Forces Network) and MCWL (Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory) totaling over seven figures (July 2025). Also a prototype agreement to advance Navy maritime decision-support modernization (August 2026).
- **Growth Signals**: Rapid funding progression (Seed → Series A → Series B within 5 months in 2026); contracts with multiple DoD branches; expanding team with open roles in software engineering; building proprietary hardware for edge deployment (Alpha).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Domain-specific expertise**: Team combines decades of military leadership experience (Marine Special Operations Commanders) with AI research and engineering.
- **Proprietary training environment**: Synthetic environment generates millions of simulated engagements (reflecting physics, constraints, and expert human priors) to train deep RL models – a key differentiator since real-world WWIII data is unavailable.
- **Full-stack decision superiority**: From campaign-level planning (Omega) to tactical edge execution (Alpha) including proprietary hardware, all integrated through an API-first, MOSA (Modular Open Systems Approach), vendor-agnostic architecture.
- **Culture of “And”**: Rejects the Iron Triangle trade-offs; believes even laws of physics can be bent with motivation – reflects a mindset of aggressive innovation for national security.

## Strategic Focus
- Enable intelligent autonomy at the tactical edge by building the hardware that powers the Alpha decision platform (Series B announcement).
- Modernize naval operational planning and maritime decision-support systems (ongoing Navy contract).
- Scale the “first frontier AI lab for national security” – continue hiring top scientists, engineers, and warfighters.
- Expand integration across echelons and warfighting functions for the Joint Force and allied partners.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven**: Directly contribute to solving one of the hardest national security challenges – using AI to save lives and win wars. “We’re here to serve.”
- **Culture**: High-performance, no-participation-trophies environment. Values: service, winning, and a culture of “And” (reject false trade-offs).
- **Team**: Led by former Marine Special Operations Commanders, with a mix of mad scientists, engineers, and warfighters – offers a unique blend of operational credibility and cutting-edge research.
- **Engineering**: Work on frontier AI (deep RL, graph networks, diffusion models, transformers) applied to real-world defense problems. Hardware-software co-design for the edge.
- **Locations**: Texas HQ, plus offices in Washington, D.C. (policy/strategy) and El Segundo, California (engineering hub). For a Software Engineer role in El Segundo, salary range $140,000–$190,000 per year.
- **Growth**: Early-stage (Series B) with significant funding and government contracts – strong trajectory for career growth and impact.

## Sources
1. [smacktechnologies.com – Careers](https://smacktechnologies.com/careers)
2. [smacktechnologies.com – About](https://smacktechnologies.com/about)
3. [smacktechnologies.com – Journal: What is Smack Technologies](https://smacktechnologies.com/journal/what-is-smack-technologies)
4. [smacktechnologies.com – Home page](https://smacktechnologies.com/)
5. [join.com – Smack Technologies jobs](https://join.com/companies/smacktechnologiescom)

## Other roles at Smack Technologies

- [Founding Frontend Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-frontend-engineer-smack-technologies-los-angeles-v6z443ffrcd8) — Los Angeles, CA