Senior Backend Software Engineer - Distributed Systems

About Us

Havoc is a leader in all-domain collaborative autonomy. Its software-defined hardware approach powers military and commercial-grade autonomous systems across sea, air, and land to sense, decide, and act together in complex and contested environments. Havoc connects assets, enabling them to share information, adapt in real time, and continue operating even when communications are disrupted or denied. Havoc optimizes mission performance and minimizes human risk.

Havoc was founded in 2024 and headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island. Learn more at Havoc: All-Domain Collaborative Autonomy .

About the Role

We are seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to drive the development of scalable, high-performance backend systems that power our autonomous platforms.

In this role, you will be hands-on in architecture and development as a senior individual contributor. You will be responsible for designing and building highly concurrent, distributed systems in Go, helping set technical direction, and ensuring reliable, secure, and performant backend services.

You will work closely with frontend, platform, autonomy, and embedded teams to deliver systems that operate reliably in real-world, mission-critical environments.

This role is ideal for someone who combines deep backend expertise with strong technical judgment and thrives in fast-paced, high-ownership environments.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Ownership

Drive execution and technical excellence across backend projects

Set engineering standards, conduct code reviews, and guide architectural decisions

Contribute to backend roadmap and delivery in partnership with product and engineering leadership

Foster a culture of ownership, quality, and continuous improvement

Backend Architecture & Development

Design, build, and maintain scalable, highly concurrent backend services in Go

Architect distributed systems that support high throughput, reliability, and real-time operations

Define service boundaries, APIs, and data models across systems

Design services for high availability and fault tolerance across availability zones

Evolve singleton services into multi-zone, distributed deployments

System Performance & Reliability

Optimize backend systems for performance, scalability, and resilience

Identify and resolve bottlenecks in distributed systems and concurrency-heavy workloads

Ensure systems meet high standards for uptime and operational reliability

Improve observability, maintainability, and operational readiness of backend services

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Partner with frontend, platform, autonomy, and embedded teams to integrate services across applications and devices

Support end-to-end system design from edge devices to cloud infrastructure

Contribute to system-level architecture across the stack

Help align backend capabilities with product, platform, and mission needs

Security & Best Practices

Enforce secure development practices across backend systems

Maintain high standards for code quality, testing, documentation, and reliability

Support technical reviews, design discussions, and production readiness efforts

Build systems with security, scalability, and long-term maintainability in mind

Qualifications

6+ years of experience in backend engineering, distributed systems engineering, or related software engineering roles

Strong expertise in Go and building highly concurrent systems

Experience designing and operating highly available, fault-tolerant distributed systems at scale

Experience with consensus and coordination primitives, such as etcd, Raft, leader election, or similar patterns for multi-zone deployments

Strong API design and system architecture skills

Experience with Kubernetes and containerized environments

Deep understanding of performance optimization, data structures, and system design

Ability to drive projects from concept through production

Strong technical judgment and ability to operate independently in fast-moving environments

Strong written and verbal communication skills

U.S. citizenship and ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance