Senior Backend Engineer – Java​/Scala & Node.js

Duration:
Long term contract

Visa:
Green card & US Citizen

We're looking for a senior engineer who doesn't just write code - they own outcomes. You'll be responsible for the full lifecycle of backend services: from design and development through production reliability. In an era where AI can generate code, we value engineers who think critically, anticipate problems, and drive systems forward.

• Own features from design → development → testing → deployment → production support
• Take accountability for the reliability and performance of your services in production
• Drive technical decisions without waiting to be told what to do
• Design scalable, resilient distributed systems handling millions of daily transactions
• Make pragmatic trade‑off decisions (consistency vs. availability, complexity vs. speed)
• Produce clear technical design documents and lead design reviews
• Evaluate build vs. buy decisions with data

• Strong proficiency in Java and/or Scala or Type Script and Node.js
• Build high‑throughput, low‑latency microservices
• Use frameworks like NestJS, Express, or Fastify (Type Script/Node.js – specific)
• Write clean, maintainable, type‑safe code – but more importantly, know when and what to build

• Write meaningful unit, integration, and contract tests – not just for coverage metrics
• Own E2E test strategy for your services
• Build confidence in deployments through automated validation
• Hands‑on with AWS services (ECS/EKS, Lambda, S3, SQS, Cloud Watch, IAM)
• Understand networking, security, and cost implications of architectural choices
• Comfortable with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/Cloud Formation)

• Kafka – design event‑driven architectures, manage topics, handle consumer lag and rebalancing
• Redis – caching strategies, pub/sub, cluster management

• Splunk – log analysis, search queries, correlation across services for incident investigation
• Understand distributed tracing, structured logging, and metric‑driven decision making

• Analyze production incidents: read logs, trace requests, identify root cause under pressure
• Think about failure modes before they happen (circuit breakers, retries, fallbacks, graceful degradation)
• Participate in on‑call rotations and drive blameless post‑mortems
• Proactively identify capacity risks and performance bottlenecks

• Identify risks, tech debt, and performance bottlenecks before they become incidents
• Propose and drive improvements – don't wait for a ticket
• Stay current with industry trends and bring relevant ideas to the team
• Challenge existing patterns when they no longer serve the system

• A pure coding role – AI can write code; we need engineers who decide what to build and why
• A ticket‑taker role – you identify work, not just execute it
• A siloed role – you'll collaborate across teams, influence architecture, and mentor others

• Experience with circuit breaker patterns – Hystrix, Resilience4j (Java/Scala specific)
• Performance tuning at scale – JVM, GC, thread pools, connection pools (Java/Scala specific)
• Node.js event loop, worker threads (Type Script/Node.js – specific)
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and deployment strategies (blue‑green, canary)
• Contributions to internal tooling or developer experience improvements
• Experience leading technical initiatives across multiple teams