---
title: 'Founding Frontend Engineer at Smack Technologies'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founding-frontend-engineer-smack-technologies-los-angeles-v6z443ffrcd8'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-05'
---

# Founding Frontend Engineer at Smack Technologies

- **Company:** Smack Technologies
- **Location:** Los Angeles, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2024-04-22
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/smacktechnologies-com/am9icG9zdDqoizYLaDL_MmbujuOhVJ2h

## Job description

Employment Type:

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

About the Job:

The US military has spent the last 22 years fighting the global war on terror. We have the processes and the technology to target terrorists and mitigate collateral damage. However, we are unprepared for conflict with a peer nation, and that reality threatens global stability.

At Smack Technologies, our mission is to build software that enables the US and its partners to re-establish deterrence. Our focus is the decision making process for prioritizing targets and for allocating resources against them.

The current targeting cycle takes 96 hours. Today, this analysis is attempted on whiteboards, PowerPoint, and Excel.  In 96 hours, 30,000 troops could land on Taiwan. It needs to take minutes. It also needs to weigh the opportunity costs and risk profiles of thousands of response options, in near-real time. We can’t afford to waste shots.

As a Frontend Engineer at Smack, you will build the UI for this complex problem. 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 staff and commanders 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 fires planning UI that allows users to rapidly build tasks and prioritize thousands of targets, in near-real time.
- Design, build, and deploy a course of action (COA) builder UI that allows users to compare COAs generated by Smack’s Joint Targeting System, audit the system’s logic, and commit a COA to action. Integrate geospatial, tabular, and graphical data visualization techniques to simplify COA comparison for commanders.
- Work side by side with end-users to rapidly iterate on the product. This role requires regular 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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, and want to solve our nation’s greatest security challenges.
- 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.

We offer:

- Competitive salary depending on level (typically $120-$170k)
- Competitive stock options (typically .2%-.5%)
- Health care (including PPO and family coverage)
- 401(k), Dental, Vision, etc plans

## 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)

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