Junior AI Innovation Specialist (Front End Specialty)

07 Oct Junior AI Innovation Specialist (Front End Specialty)

About Black Swift Technologies

Founded in 2011 and based in Boulder, Colorado, Black Swift Technologies is a premier engineering firm and pioneer in specialized unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) built to operate in the world’s most demanding and hazardous atmospheric conditions. From intercepting tornadic supercell storms in the VORTEX2 field campaign and sampling active volcanoes to measuring soil trafficability and wildland fire behavior, Black Swift delivers highly durable, American-made dual-use aerial platforms. All Black Swift systems are anchored by the proprietary, custom-designed SwiftCore™ Flight Management System (FMS), which encompasses high-performance autopilots, portable ground stations (SwiftStation™), and robust control electronics designed from the ground up to ensure strict NDAA and ITAR compliance. By controlling the entire design, hardware, and avionics supply chain, Black Swift guarantees the quality and operational resilience of its aircraft, such as the air-deployed SØ dropsonde-mimicking glider and the long-endurance E2 soil moisture mapping drone. As a key operating group within the KrateoSky autonomous intelligence network, Black Swift Technologies leverages common platforms, unified perception systems, and AI-native software architectures to deliver critical aerial capabilities across defense, public safety, and scientific research missions.

Position Summary

You will build and maintain the application surfaces that operators, internal teams, and customers actually use. This role is not a legacy “frontend developer” seat. It is a junior AI innovation specialist role with a front-end specialty: someone who can turn telemetry, payload outputs, mission data, uploads, customer access flows, and operational friction into software that is fast, usable, reliable, and worth shipping. You will work on interfaces such as SwiftWeb and adjacent user-facing tools that translate complex flight and payload data into clear, actionable workflows. A strong UX head matters here because the hard part is not merely producing code—it is deciding what belongs in front of the user, how workflows should feel, and how complex operational information becomes obvious rather than noisy.

This role sits at the intersection of Black Swift application needs and the KrateoSky AI Innovation Office way of working. Your operational priorities will come from the software and product reality on the ground—what users need, what the team is trying to ship, what workflows are too fragile, too manual, or too confusing. Your technical development will happen inside an AI-native engineering environment that expects aggressive automation, rapid iteration, strong ownership, and a willingness to work across interface logic, API integration, data flows, UX refinement, and backend or workflow implementation whenever the fastest path to a working product requires it.

Junior but high-agency IC role: We are not looking for someone who waits for perfect requirements, pixel-perfect handoffs, or a manager to decompose every problem into a ticket tree. We are looking for a builder early in their career who has real upside: someone who can take a messy operational need, ask sharp questions, reduce it to fundamentals, and build an interface or workflow that actually solves the problem. Strong judgment, curiosity, and pace matter here as much as years.

You are AI-native in how you work—AI assistants are your default environment. You generate components, typed API clients, tests, scripts, and scaffolding with AI. You use AI to debug state issues, accelerate refactors, compare implementation options, and move through repetitive work quickly without lowering the quality bar. You see AI not as decoration but as the force multiplier that lets a small team move at disproportionate speed.

Embody our values and behaviors—deliver precision and quality, challenge how things are done, break problems into fundamentals, automate relentlessly, hold yourself accountable, and deliver together no matter the obstacles. You must exhibit Above the Line behaviors: operating as a Coach, Creator, and Challenger rather than a Victim, Hero, or Villain. You apply automation-first engineering: when you see repetitive manual work in development or operations, your instinct is to remove it. You operate as a thoughtful collaborator with strong documentation habits, high UI/UX care, and a PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) mindset that favors rapid learning and real iteration.

Key Responsibilities

• User-Facing Application Development: Build and maintain web interfaces and application workflows used by operators, internal teams, and customers to access mission data, upload files, manage information, and interact with Black Swift software products.
• SwiftWeb and Front-End Feature Delivery: Implement and refine features across SwiftWeb and related user-facing surfaces, ensuring that the software is clear, dependable, and useful under real operational pressure rather than merely visually attractive.
• API and Data Integration: Connect front-end systems to back-end services, authentication flows, telemetry feeds, customer-access pathways, and operational data sources with clean contracts and robust failure handling.
• Data-Heavy and Geospatial UI Work: Build interfaces that can handle dense information, large uploads, visualization-heavy workflows, and—where required—maps, flight traces, geospatial overlays, or sensor-driven data displays.
• Full-Stack Delivery Bias: Even though this role has a front-end specialty, you are expected to cross the stack when needed—writing backend handlers, service glue, workflow automations, or integration code when that is the fastest way to ship a working product.
• AI-Native Engineering Execution: Use AI assistants aggressively to scaffold components, generate tests, accelerate refactors, write scripts, and reduce development friction while keeping a disciplined engineering quality bar.
• Usability, Performance, and Reliability: Improve responsiveness, interaction quality, error handling, browser behavior, and workflow clarity so that the software is trustworthy for both internal teams and external users.
• Testing and Engineering Discipline: Contribute unit tests, end-to-end checks, regression thinking, and general software hygiene so that fast delivery does not degrade the application layer over time.
• Reusable Interface Patterns: Help establish reusable components, design patterns, and implementation standards that make the application stack easier to extend, maintain, and integrate as the broader platform scales.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with software, operations, business development, and technical leadership to translate ambiguous operational needs into software that actually gets adopted and used.

Required Qualifications

• Engineer I Level Delivery: Typically 0–2 years of relevant experience, or equivalent demonstrated capability, in software engineering, front-end application development, product-facing tooling, or adjacent disciplines.
• Demonstrated Builder Ability: You have built working software—through professional work, internships, serious side projects, or equivalent—that shows you can turn requirements into real interfaces rather than just assemble tutorials.
• Modern Front-End Technical Depth: Practical experience with a modern JavaScript or TypeScript framework such as React, Vue, or Svelte, plus comfort working in component-driven application architectures.
• API and Integration Capability: Direct experience consuming APIs, handling asynchronous data, managing state, and building interfaces that reflect real back-end behavior rather than static mocks.
• Strong UX Head: You have unusually good judgment for what should be on the screen, what should be hidden, how users should move through a workflow, and how information density should be managed. You notice when workflows are confusing, brittle, or visually noisy and you know how to improve them.
• Software Engineering Discipline: Sound habits around version control, testing, debugging, code quality, and incremental delivery. We do not need a pure designer; we need an engineer who ships responsibly.
• Command-Line / Product-Adjacent Environment Comfort: Comfortable using command-line tooling and terminal-driven workflows where required for development, integration, debugging, deployment, or product-adjacent software work.
• AI-Native Proficiency: Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and similar assistants are part of your normal workflow; you are comfortable using AI to accelerate code generation, debugging, test writing, refactoring, and documentation.
• Export Control Requirements: This position must meet U.S. export control compliance requirements. To meet U.S. export control compliance requirements, a “U.S. Person” as defined by 22 C.F.R. §120.62 is required. “U.S. Person” includes U.S. Citizen, U.S. National, lawful permanent resident, refugee, or asylee.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience with data-heavy, geospatial, mapping, or visualization-rich applications.
• Familiarity with telemetry, sensor data, robotics, or other operational software domains where interfaces must make complex information usable.
• Comfort extending beyond the browser into backend, workflow automation, or integration work when the fastest path to delivery requires it.
• Experience with Python, serverless functions, workflow tooling, or other pragmatic backend-adjacent development that helps close application delivery loops.

Logistics

• Department: AI Innovation Office (KSAIO) / Software Applications
• Location: Boulder, CO
• Reports To: Jack Elston, Ph.D. (CEO) and Maciej Stachura, Ph.D. (CTO)
• Compensation: $75,000 – $95,000 / year (targeted base; total package includes comprehensive benefits)