Staff Backend Engineer (Node.js/TypeScript)

Quick Facts

• Role: Staff Backend Engineer (Node.js/TypeScript)

• Focus: Backend technical direction, architecture standards, reliability for a live workforce management platform

Description

Own the backend’s technical direction and long-term health as the most senior backend engineer. You will make architectural decisions, set engineering standards, stay hands-on with core abstractions and hard problems, and lead efforts to keep a live, money-handling system reliable as the team grows.

Responsibilities

• Own backend technical direction; document architectural decisions

• Set standards for service boundaries, data modeling, API design, error handling, and observability

• Write code regularly on core abstractions and the hardest problems to establish team patterns

• Ensure reliability, performance, and maintainability of the backend

• Diagnose and fix structural production issues (slow endpoints, lock contention, fragile migrations)

• Help keep the codebase easy for new engineers to ramp up

• Break product intent into sequenced technical plans and provide honest effort estimates

• Advise senior engineers on hard problems before implementation

• Improve testing, release process, review flow, and technical documentation

Requirements

• 8+ years of professional backend development experience

• Several years as the senior technical owner of a production system worked on by other engineers

• Strong commercial experience with Node.js and TypeScript

• Strong experience with PostgreSQL or other relational databases

• Experience designing systems with strict correctness requirements (payments, audit trails)

• Experience improving a live production system without resorting to a full rewrite

• Daily use of AI coding tools as a core part of your development workflow

• Experience advising other engineers on complex technical problems

• Ability to explain technical constraints and trade-offs to product and business stakeholders

• Availability for at least 3 hours daily overlap with US Eastern Time (EST)

• Excellent English communication skills

Benefits

Hands-on senior backend leadership with ownership of architecture, standards, and backend health.