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Senior Backend Engineer

168k – 210kSan Francisco, CALos Angeles, CARaleigh, NCHybrid5+ YOE
Summary

Builds and maintains scalable backend services and APIs using Node.js/TypeScript, GraphQL/REST for web/mobile experiences. Owns full development lifecycle, optimizes performance, mentors engineers; requires 5+ years backend experience and AI tool proficiency.

About the role

What You'll Do

  • Build and maintain backend services and APIs (GraphQL and REST) using Node.js and TypeScript
  • Design and evolve real-time, event-driven systems that power core BuildOps workflows
  • Drive the full software development lifecycle: requirements, design docs, implementation, testing, deployment, and maintenance
  • Write clean, well-tested, well-documented code with appropriate abstractions and automated tests
  • Improve observability and reliability with the right metrics, logging, tracing, and alerting
  • Profile and optimize services for latency, throughput, and cost efficiency
  • Use and help standardize AI-powered tools for code generation, refactoring, debugging, test creation, and analysis
  • Collaborate closely with product, design, and other partners to translate business needs into technical solutions and tradeoffs
  • Participate in and often lead technical design reviews, code reviews, and architecture discussions
  • Mentor other engineers, share best practices, and help raise the overall bar for the team

What We Look For

Must-Have Skills

  • 5+ years of professional experience in backend or full-stack development, including 1–2+ years in a senior or lead capacity on large-scale applications
  • Strong experience building distributed web applications and backend services (microservices or service-oriented architectures)
  • Deep hands-on experience with Node.js (preferably with TypeScript) in production environments
  • Experience designing, building, and maintaining GraphQL (Apollo) and/or REST APIs
  • Solid database design and modeling experience (SQL and/or NoSQL) and understanding of tradeoffs between different storage technologies
  • Strong computer science fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, concurrency, and object-oriented or typed design
  • Proven experience using AI tools to enhance your development workflow (e.g., code generation, refactoring, debugging, test creation, or analysis), plus curiosity about emerging AI technologies
  • Ability to take ownership of projects end to end and operate proactively in an ambiguous, fast-paced environment
  • Excellent communication and collaboration skills; you listen well, seek context, and explain technical decisions clearly

Nice To Have Skills

  • BS or MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field
  • Experience with:
    • Event-driven architectures and messaging systems
    • Cloud platforms (e.g., GCP, AWS, or similar)
    • Containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
    • Additional backend languages or ecosystems (e.g., Python) for services, automation, or data pipelines
  • Experience with observability tooling (metrics, logging, tracing) and performance profiling in distributed systems
  • Exposure to machine learning or data-driven systems

Compensation

  • $168,000 - $210,000 base salary range + annual bonus
Skills
Node.jsTypeScriptGraphQLRESTApolloSQLNoSQLDockerKubernetesAWSGCPPythonEvent-driven architecturesObservability toolsAI tools
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