Rivac LabsRealtime Collaboration Engineer
Building a feature where multiple people edit the same document or board at once looks straightforward until two users' changes conflict, or a user goes offline and comes back to a mess. We build the realtime sync layer for multi-user and offline-capable apps using CRDTs or operational transforms, handling presence, conflict resolution, and reconnection correctly rather than papering over race conditions with last-write-wins. This is the right call for products adding live collaboration — shared documents, whiteboards, multiplayer tools — where getting conflict resolution wrong means silent data loss for your users. You get a sync engine that's been tested against the actual failure modes, not just the happy path.
How We’d Approach This
A clear, staged plan — not a black box
- 1
Map your collaboration model — who edits what, how conflicts should resolve — before picking a CRDT or OT approach.
- 2
Build the sync engine against one real document type, testing concurrent edits and offline/reconnect scenarios directly.
- 3
Review conflict-resolution behavior with your team using deliberately adversarial test cases, not just clean demos.
- 4
Extend the sync layer across remaining document types with presence indicators and reconnection handling in place.
What You Get
Deliverables from this engagement
- Working realtime sync engine (CRDT or OT based)
- Presence and conflict-resolution logic tested against edge cases
- Offline-capable client behavior with reconnection handling
- Documentation of the sync protocol for future maintenance
Six Ways We Could Architect This
Different engagement, different build — pick the shape that fits
There’s more than one way to deliver on this service. Browse a few of the ways we’d structure the work, depending on your speed, budget, and integration needs.
Ready to get started?
Tell us what you’re trying to get done and we’ll help you find the highest-leverage place to start — scoped small enough to prove itself before you commit to anything bigger.
Talk to us about Realtime Collaboration EngineerMost engagements like this start as a $500–$2,500 pilot — see full pricing.