---
title: 'Senior Software Engineer at Tagup'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-tagup-california-hdk4zedd0hjy'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-15'
---

# Senior Software Engineer at Tagup

- **Company:** Tagup
- **Location:** California
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-08-27
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-15
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/tagup/f4334e3d-5a9c-4103-9db0-a1fe3158491e

## Job description

Tagup is a Series A defense technology company, founded at MIT, that is delivering logistics decision advantage with next-generation AI. It all started on a balcony at MIT, with an idea about monitoring asset data via the cloud using passive RFID tags (TAG) - sent up (UP) to the cloud.

Our product Manifest— is the operating system for the physical world. We’re a team of engineers and data scientists driven by our mission to use reinforcement learning and probabilistic modeling to optimize military logistics and critical infrastructure, ensuring our customers get the best performance they can out of the resources.

You make a real world impact where your code won't just optimize a shopping cart or a compute primitive. It will optimize supply chains for the U.S. military and prevent catastrophic failures in critical infrastructure. We do not use proprietary tooling or build systems and deployment pipelines. We build on modern, open standards you can apply in any space. You won't just own a slice of a service. You will own entire architectural domains—from API design and data modeling to deployment and monitoring strategies. You’ll work directly with PhD-level data scientists and former special operators. We value high-velocity decision-making over "approval chains."

## The Role

You know how to operate at scale. You live by ownership and bias for action. But working within the confines of a massive company or cloud provider, your scope is often limited to a single service, proprietary internal tooling, and endless operational reviews.

This is a "0 to 1" role. We don't need you to maintain a legacy service with 10 years of tech debt. We need you to architect the core platform that ingests, processes, and acts on billions of data points from the physical world. It's an opportunity to escape the service team grind.

## What You’ll Build

- Tagup AI Agent: Optimize complex NL queries and time-series data storage to ensure sub-second latency for our AI models.
- Core Architecture: Design and implement high-performance REST APIs and microservices that power the Manifest platform.
- Data Ingestion at Scale: Build the "nervous system" of our platform—robust ETL pipelines that ingest high-frequency sensor data from diverse industrial assets.
- Operational Excellence: Bring your "Bar Raiser" mentality to our infrastructure. Implement sophisticated monitoring, alarming, and automated CI/CD pipelines to ensure 99.99% availability without the bureaucracy.

Required Skills

- You treat architecture as an evolving being that morphs as customers scale and storage/compute/security needs change.
- You understand "Scale" vs. "Complexity": You know that scale isn't just about TPS; it's about handling complex data relationships.
- You want to mentor: You are ready to take the "Tech Lead" mantle, mentoring junior engineers and setting the standard for code quality and design patterns.

The Tech Stack

- AI: pyro, torch, MCP, Langchain using Claude.
- Languages: Python (FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, Pandas) – We value your software engineering fundamentals and ability to learn over which specific languages you have experience in.
- Data: PostgreSQL, Redis.
- Infra: AWS (EC2, RDS, EKS), Kubernetes, Terraform.

Tagup is an equal opportunity employer and individuals seeking employment with us are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, physical or mental disability, veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Citizenship: Due to the nature of our work with the U.S. Department of Defense, applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor visas at this time.

## About Tagup

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Tagup provides an AI-powered logistics decision engine, Manifest, that helps defense and enterprise organizations simulate, optimize, and execute logistics courses of action under uncertainty.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Bootstrapped with grant funding)
- **Headquarters**: New York, New York, USA (with offices in Boston, San Francisco, and Somerville, MA)
- **Founded**: 2017
- **Founders**: Jon Garrity (CEO) and Will Vega-Brown (CTO), affiliated with the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

## Core Business
- **Primary Industry**: Defense technology / AI-powered logistics for military and enterprise
- **Target Customers**: U.S. military branches (Marine Corps, Army, Air Force, Navy), defense organizations, and enterprise logistics operations
- **Mission**: Deliver logistics decision advantage to sustain readiness in contested and degraded environments

## Products & Services
- **Manifest®**: An AI decision engine that simulates and optimizes logistics courses of action. It unifies data across systems of record, sensors, and telematics; builds a living world model of assets and rules; uses proprietary Generative Reinforcement Learning™ to simulate millions of possible scenarios; and autonomously implements optimized plans through existing systems. Includes Argus®, an LLM-based conversational interface for natural language mission input.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of $215K (grants from ACRE and others in 2016 and 2017)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: U.S. Marine Corps (active contracts, including Marine Aircraft Group 39 and MARFORPAC), U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy; SOC 2 Type II, IL5, CMMC Level 2 compliant
- **Growth Signals**: 31 employees with +53.6% year-over-year headcount growth; 24 active job postings (+700% YoY); $2.1 million contract modification (Aug 2026) to expand Manifest for U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific; founded at MIT CSAIL

## Competitive Advantages
- **AI-native logistics decision engine**: Proprietary Generative Reinforcement Learning explicitly reasons about uncertainty and tradeoffs under incomplete information, a capability traditional logistics tools lack.
- **Closed-loop execution**: Not just a dashboard—Manifest autonomously implements optimized courses of action within existing military systems of record, accelerating decision cycles.
- **Deep defense partnerships**: Trusted partner of the U.S. military with active contracts at tactical, operational, and theater levels, providing a strong moat in the defense tech space.
- **MIT CSAIL affiliation**: Founders and technology originate from a top-tier AI research lab, lending credibility in both technical and defense communities.

## Strategic Focus
- **Expand defense contracts**: Recently won a $2.1M expansion with MARFORPAC, moving from tactical to theater-level sustainment. Actively hiring business development leads (Director of Business Development, Air Force Lead, Foreign Military Sales Lead) to capture more Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps contracts.
- **Scale the team**: Rapid hiring (+700% YoY job postings) indicates aggressive scaling to meet contract demand and product development.
- **Product innovation**: Continued development of Manifest’s world model, Generative Reinforcement Learning, and Argus conversational interface, with a focus on contested and degraded environments where data is sparse.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven impact**: Directly contributes to U.S. military readiness and logistics decision advantage in critical theaters like the Indo-Pacific. The work has tangible national security implications.
- **Rapid growth trajectory**: 53.6% headcount growth YoY, 24 open roles, and significant contract wins signal a company on a steep upward trajectory—opportunity for career growth and impact.
- **Strong technical culture**: Founded at MIT CSAIL; tech stack includes Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Kubernetes, MLOps tools, and generative AI. Employs Lead ML Engineers and Data Scientists, indicating a deep engineering focus.
- **Office locations**: HQ in New York, with additional offices in Boston, San Francisco, and Somerville—offering geographic flexibility.
- **Current hiring focus**: Forward Deployed Industrial Engineer, Defense Logistics AI; Product Manager; Partnerships Lead; Air Force Lead; Director of Business Development—roles that combine technical depth with mission impact.

## Sources
1. [tagup.ai](https://tagup.ai)
2. [tagup.ai/about](https://tagup.ai/about)
3. [tagup.ai/careers](https://tagup.ai/careers)
4. [tagup.ai/platform](https://tagup.ai/platform)
5. [linkedin.com/company/tagup](https://www.linkedin.com/company/tagup)
6. [jobs.lever.co/tagup](https://jobs.lever.co/tagup)

## Other roles at Tagup

- [Air Force Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/air-force-lead-tagup-new-york-gx0prjr8ay7p) — New York, NY
- [Product Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/product-manager-tagup-new-york-6eempemj3115) — New York, NY
- [Director of Business Development](https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-business-development-tagup-new-york-4af7h4khpmtr) — New York, NY
- [Forward Deployed Industrial Engineer, Defense Logistics AI](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-industrial-engineer-defense-logistics-ai-tagup-salt-lake-city-8tnz1dnyy9yc) — Salt Lake City, UT
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