Meet Daria Gorchylina, Technical Owner at 90POE

As Technical Owner at 90POE, Daria ensures OpenOcean STUDIO remains at the forefront of maritime technology, providing a secure and scalable platform built to meet the evolving needs of maritime operations. With experience spanning frontend architecture, cloud-native systems and team leadership, she brings both technical depth and a strong people-first approach to delivering value.

What part of your role at 90POE do you find most rewarding: leading teams, solving technical challenges, or shaping platform strategy?

For me, the most rewarding aspect is leading teams, as it allows me to influence the platform from multiple perspectives. I’m fortunate to work alongside some of the most talented professionals in the industry. My role involves removing blockers, reducing technical uncertainty, setting high standards, and ensuring the team remains aligned with them. I also help maintain a clear and shared vision of where our products are heading.

We have a long-term goal to build the most advanced platform in the maritime industry and everyone in our teams understands and contributes to that vision. We work to uphold the highest engineering practices, and part of my responsibility is to ensure that mindset remains strong and is reflected in everything we deliver.

From a technical perspective, what makes OpenOcean STUDIO a unique platform, especially in terms of user needs or technical design?

OpenOcean STUDIO is built on a modern, scalable, and secure architecture, using proven design patterns and the latest technologies. Our stack includes microservices written in Go, microfrontends developed with TypeScript and React, and a cloud-native infrastructure on AWS. This combination offers an excellent balance of performance, flexibility, and maintainability.

This approach enables us to respond quickly to evolving user needs while maintaining high levels of quality and reliability. We can innovate without compromising stability—essential in the maritime industry, where precision and trust are critical.

We also place a strong emphasis on developer experience. For example, we’ve streamlined our tooling so teams can run the onboard platform locally with minimal setup. This reduces time spent on environment configuration and allows us to focus on delivering tangible product value to our users.

From code reviews to removing technical blockers, you are deeply involved in enabling team performance. What practices have you found most effective in keeping engineering teams aligned and motivated?

1. Clear goals and context: With strong collaboration between our product team and our customers, we not only understand what we are building, but also why it matters. This insight into real-world operational impact gives the team a strong sense of purpose and direction.

2. High-trust autonomy with guardrails: I believe in empowering people to do their best work. My role is to provide the support and boundaries that allow the team to make informed decisions with confidence. Encouraging initiative and ownership builds pride and accountability in delivering great results.

3. Continuous learning and knowledge sharing: We actively create space for learning, whether it’s experimenting with new tools, improving our codebase, or refining our practices. Knowledge is shared openly so the entire team benefits, which strengthens collaboration and fosters innovation.

What do you think will be the biggest shift in frontend architecture or tooling in the coming years, particularly within the maritime tech industry?

AI is already reshaping frontend architecture, and the maritime tech sector is no exception. We’re using LLM-powered tools such as GitHub Copilot and Cursor AI to accelerate development and testing. But this is only the beginning.

In the coming years, AI will enable us to design interfaces that adapt dynamically to the user’s role, vessel type, or operational scenario. This shift will move us from static, generic UIs to adaptive, context-aware frontends, making workflows faster, safer, and more intuitive.

The most significant change won’t just be the tools themselves, but how AI becomes embedded in the design process, empowering us to deliver smarter, more personalized experiences at scale.