Principal Frontend Engineer

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

HavocAI is seeking a Principal Frontend Engineer to help architect, build, and scale the real-time interfaces operators use to command autonomous systems across air, surface, and subsurface domains.

Our operators interact with autonomous vehicles through a real-time geospatial interface where live position, telemetry, and system state continuously flow into a common operational picture. The decisions made through that interface directly affect vehicles operating in the real world.

This is a deeply technical individual contributor role for an engineer who has built and scaled high-performance, real-time geospatial applications in production. You understand what happens as entity counts, update frequencies, data volumes, and product complexity increase—and how to design systems that stay responsive and reliable as they scale.

You will work closely with the Head of Frontend and senior engineers to shape frontend architecture and technical direction while remaining hands-on with the most difficult engineering problems. This role has no direct reports, but you will have significant influence through architecture, technical leadership, mentorship, and the quality of the systems you build.

What You’ll Do

Frontend Architecture & Real-Time Systems

• Architect and build frontend systems capable of handling high-frequency, real-time data at scale.

• Establish production-ready patterns for data ingestion, transformation, state management, and rendering.

• Design transport-to-render architectures that prevent high-frequency telemetry from overwhelming the UI.

• Implement effective strategies for batching, throttling, caching, workers, and state isolation.

• Design predictable behavior for intermittent or degraded connectivity, including reconnection, state reconciliation, and offline tolerance.

• Identify architectural and performance risks early and drive solutions before they become production issues.

Geospatial Engineering

• Guide the architecture and evolution of HavocAI’s real-time geospatial interfaces.

• Design scalable approaches to map layers, feature identity, interaction state, rendering, and lifecycle management.

• Build performant experiences for large and continuously changing geospatial datasets.

• Optimize rendering as tracked entities, telemetry rates, and visual complexity increase.

• Contribute directly to complex geospatial capabilities and establish patterns other engineers can build upon.

Performance & Scalability

• Profile and optimize browser performance across rendering, memory, CPU, network, and GPU workloads.

• Use measurement and profiling to guide architectural decisions rather than assumptions.

• Design client-side architectures that isolate high-frequency ingestion and processing from user-facing rendering workloads.

• Anticipate scaling challenges and sequence technical investments appropriately as the platform grows.

• Improve frontend reliability and performance without creating unnecessary complexity or process.

Technical Leadership

• Partner with the Head of Frontend and senior engineers on architecture, technical strategy, and major scaling decisions.

• Remain hands-on with implementation, particularly on the most complex or technically consequential parts of the frontend platform.

• Set a high bar for code quality, architecture, testing, maintainability, and performance.

• Lead design reviews and develop technical proposals that clearly communicate tradeoffs and recommended approaches.

• Mentor senior engineers in real-time systems, geospatial engineering, performance, and frontend architecture.

• Build alignment across teams through strong technical judgment and clear communication.

What We’re Looking For

• 10+ years of frontend engineering experience, including significant experience operating at Staff, Principal, or equivalent technical scope.

• Deep production experience building and scaling high-volume, real-time applications.

• Expert-level experience with React and TypeScript, including a first-principles understanding of React’s rendering model and frontend performance.

• Deep experience building map-based geospatial applications using MapLibre, Mapbox GL, Deck.gl, or equivalent technologies.

• Demonstrated experience optimizing large and dynamic geospatial feature sets.

• Hands-on experience scaling a real-time application through significant growth in tracked entities, update frequency, or data volume.

• Experience with multiple real-time communication technologies such as WebSockets, MQTT, gRPC-web, SSE, or similar protocols.

• Deep browser performance expertise across rendering, memory, CPU, networking, and GPU bottlenecks.

• Experience designing client-side data architectures using workers, batching, caching, state boundaries, and other techniques for isolating high-frequency workloads.

• Experience designing applications for degraded or intermittent connectivity, including reconnection and state reconciliation.

• Strong software architecture and systems-design fundamentals.

• Demonstrated ability to make sound technical tradeoffs and sequence architectural changes within a production system.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to influence technical direction without relying on formal authority.

• High ownership and comfort operating in a fast-moving, ambiguous engineering environment.

Nice to Have

• Experience taking an internal operational tool and evolving it into a scalable, multi-tenant product.

• Deep data visualization experience using D3, custom charting, or large-dataset visualization technologies.

• Experience with WebGL, Three.js, custom shaders, terrain visualization, or 3D geospatial applications.

• Experience with autonomous systems, robotics, command-and-control software, or real-time operational platforms.

• Experience in defense, aerospace, robotics, or other mission- or safety-critical environments.

• Familiarity with distributed systems, telemetry platforms, or backend architectures supporting high-frequency frontend applications.

What Success Looks Like

Within your first 12 months, you will have:

• Helped establish a frontend architecture capable of supporting significantly greater numbers of autonomous assets, telemetry streams, and real-time updates.

• Improved the performance, responsiveness, and reliability of HavocAI’s geospatial interfaces.

• Established scalable patterns for real-time data ingestion, state management, geospatial rendering, and degraded-connectivity scenarios.

• Identified and addressed architectural risks before they became constraints on product or platform growth.

• Raised the technical bar across the frontend organization through hands-on engineering, design reviews, architecture, and mentorship.

• 100% Employer paid Health, Dental and Vision Insurance for you and your families

• Life Insurance (Employer Paid)

• Ability to participate in the companies 401k program (Matching)

• Unlimited PTO policy with an enforced 2 week minimum

• Equity Package

• Work / Home Office Stipend

• Global Entry

• 16 Week Paid Parental Leave

• Monthly Health and Wellness Stipend

• Innovation: We are driven to break new ground. Every day presents an opportunity to challenge the status quo, think boldly, and deliver advanced solutions that transform the future of defense technology.

• Integrity: We hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards, ensuring transparency, accountability, and trust in all our actions and partnerships.

• Mission-Driven: We are focused on achieving impactful outcomes that align with our core mission—protecting lives through innovation.

• Forward-Leaning: We continuously seek out new opportunities and remain at the forefront of technological advancements. We embrace change and anticipate the challenges of tomorrow with confidence and creativity.

• Ownership of All Tasks: At HavocAI, no problem is too complex or too trivial. We believe that greatness comes from tackling the hardest challenges, but also in handling the smallest, sometimes thankless, tasks with the same level of commitment and care.

• Servant Leadership: We lead by serving others, whether it’s supporting our employees, partners, or the broader community. Empowering those around us is key to achieving long-term success and making a lasting impact.

HavocAI is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is committed to creating an inclusive and diverse workplace. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected status.