Shipping OceanSMART forward: frontend modernization without stopping the fleet (10 months)
Ten months as an embedded engineer on OceanSMART, a container-shipping ERP used by global logistics teams. Modernized a two-year-outdated frontend stack and shipped new tracking features in parallel, without halting the product roadmap.
- JavaScript / TypeScript
- React
- Node.js
- GraphQL
- MongoDB
Challenge
OceanSMART is boring-but-critical software: if it breaks, container ships do not sail on time and freight does not reach its destination. Global logistics teams rely on it to plan vessel and container movement across ports and terminals, reconcile paperwork, and keep operations moving when something inevitably slips.
By 2022 the frontend was two years out of date. Tracking views were falling behind what operators actually needed day-to-day. And the product team had a roadmap to deliver. They could not pause for six months while an invisible modernization finished.
Solution
Refactor in place, not rewrite. The stack upgrade went in incrementally, behind the same product surface operators already knew. No big-bang migration that forced a parallel codebase and a risky cutover.
Ship tracking features alongside the upgrade. Every sprint delivered something visible for operators and something invisible for the stack simultaneously. Operators got better tooling each week; the modernization moved steadily underneath them.
Boring-but-critical posture. Most of the work was about data correctness: the right container status on the right screen at the right moment. Performance and polish came after correctness, never before.
Frontend stack
Before
By 2022 the frontend was two years out of date. The product team could not pause for six months while an invisible modernization finished.
After
The stack upgrade went in incrementally, behind the same product surface operators already knew. No big-bang migration, no parallel codebase, no risky cutover.
Operator tooling
Before
Tracking views were falling behind what operators actually needed day-to-day across ports and terminals.
After
Every sprint delivered something visible for operators and something invisible for the stack simultaneously. Vessel and container tracking shipped while modernization was still in progress.
Oceaneering did not share commercial data; no throughput metrics are attributable or invented.
Results
The frontend stack caught up to current without a full rewrite and without pausing the product roadmap. Vessel and container tracking features that operators had been waiting on shipped while the modernization was still in progress. Day-to-day operational visibility inside OceanSMART improved for the teams using it in ports and terminals worldwide.
No business throughput metrics are attributable to this engagement. Oceaneering did not share commercial data, and we do not invent them. The deliverables are engineering: a modernized stack and shipped features, verified in production.