About the role

Role overview

HavocAI is hiring a Senior Backend Software Engineer to design and build scalable, high-performance backend systems for its autonomous platforms. You’ll be a senior hands-on individual contributor, driving both architecture and implementation of reliable, secure, and performant services.

Responsibilities

Technical ownership:
- Drive backend execution and engineering excellence across projects
- Set engineering standards, perform code reviews, and influence architectural decisions
- Contribute to backend roadmap and delivery planning with product/engineering leadership
Backend architecture & development:
- Design, build, and maintain highly concurrent distributed systems in Go
- Define service boundaries, APIs, and data models
- Build backend services that support autonomy workflows and platform capabilities
Performance & reliability:
- Optimize for performance, scalability, resilience, and real-time operations
- Identify and resolve bottlenecks in distributed/concurrency-heavy workloads
- Improve maintainability, observability, and production readiness
Cross-functional collaboration:
- Partner with frontend, platform, autonomy, and embedded teams
- Support end-to-end system design from edge devices to cloud infrastructure
Security & best practices:
- Enforce secure development practices
- Maintain high standards for code quality, testing, and documentation
- Contribute to design reviews and backend engineering practices

Requirements

6+ years of backend or distributed systems engineering experience
Strong expertise in Go and building highly concurrent systems
Experience designing and operating distributed systems at scale
Strong API design and system architecture skills
Experience with Kubernetes and containerized environments
Deep understanding of performance optimization, data structures, networking, and system design
Ability to drive projects from concept to production
Strong communication, ownership, and cross-functional collaboration skills

Nice to have

Experience in IoT, robotics, autonomy, or distributed hardware systems
Networking fundamentals and debugging experience
AWS or cloud infrastructure experience
Familiarity with embedded systems or hardware integration
Observability/monitoring and production operations experience
Experience working in defense technology

About HavocAI

HavocAI develops collaborative autonomy systems and autonomous surface vessels for defense and commercial maritime missions. The company focuses on building self-tasking, mission-critical autonomy technology and scalable platforms that operate reliably in real-world environments.