Backend Lead - Node.js/TypeScript

Backend Lead

About the Role :

We are looking for an experienced Backend Lead to take ownership of core server-side systems powering a modern, scalable digital platform.

The role involves leading backend architecture, designing highly reliable APIs and services, improving system performance, and establishing strong engineering standards. You will serve as a technical anchor for the backend team while remaining hands-on with critical system design and engineering decisions.

You will work closely with Frontend, Mobile, and DevOps teams to build backend systems that are scalable, secure, observable, and resilient under real-world production loads.

Key Responsibilities :

System Design &

• Backend Architecture :
• Design and evolve APIs, data models, caching strategies, and message-driven architectures.
• Own the performance, scalability, and reliability of backend systems.
• Define and monitor service-level objectives (SLOs) and proactively address system degradation.
• Make key architectural decisions around databases, query optimisation, indexing, caching, and data partitioning.
• Design and maintain reliable payment integrations with appropriate security, idempotency, and reconciliation mechanisms.
• Build backend systems capable of handling high-volume production workloads.

Engineering Quality &

• Standards :
• Establish and maintain backend coding, testing, and engineering standards.
• Drive unit, integration, and contract testing practices across backend services.
• Lead backend code reviews and provide actionable technical feedback.
• Improve observability through effective logging, monitoring, alerting, and tracing.
• Lead backend-specific incident reviews and postmortems, ensuring root causes are addressed through sustainable engineering solutions.

Technical Leadership &

• Mentoring :
• Mentor and technically guide junior and mid-level backend engineers.
• Help engineers improve their system design, debugging, and production engineering capabilities.
• Participate in technical hiring, including defining evaluation standards, conducting technical interviews, and providing structured feedback.
• Collaborate with DevOps teams on infrastructure sizing, deployment reliability, and cloud-cost optimisation.
• Work cross-functionally with engineering teams to ensure consistent architecture and technical standards.

Must-Have Skills &

Experience :

• 6 - 10 years of backend engineering experience, with demonstrated ownership of complex and scalable systems.
• Strong hands-on expertise in Node.js and TypeScript.
• Strong understanding of both relational and non-relational databases, including appropriate use cases and optimisation techniques.
• Practical experience with Redis or similar caching technologies.
• Experience with message brokers such as Kafka, RabbitMQ, AWS SQS, or equivalent.
• Hands-on experience integrating payment gateways, including understanding of idempotency, transaction reliability, security, and reconciliation.
• Experience with Stripe or similar payment platforms is preferred.
• Strong experience building and maintaining production-scale RESTful and/or GraphQL APIs.
• Strong hands-on experience with AWS, particularly services such as Lambda, DynamoDB, RDS, ElastiCache, SES/SNS, and API Gateway.
• Familiarity with event-driven architecture and programming.
• Experience with observability and monitoring tools such as Datadog, Splunk, CloudWatch, and Grafana.
• Strong understanding of backend performance optimisation, reliability, and production debugging.

Nice-to-Have :

• Experience building booking, availability, inventory, or transaction-heavy systems.
• Experience working with high-concurrency or high-throughput backend systems.
• Experience designing distributed systems and event-driven architectures.
• Experience working in a product-focused engineering environment.

What Success Looks Like :

• Core APIs consistently meet defined p95/p99 latency SLOs, including during peak loads.
• Backend test coverage and observability improve significantly within the first six months.
• Payment integrations operate reliably with zero reconciliation errors over a rolling quarter.
• Junior and mid-level engineers demonstrate measurable improvement in system design and production engineering capabilities.
• Backend incidents lead to systemic improvements rather than temporary fixes.

Key Performance Indicators :

• API Latency - p95 / p99
• API Error Rates
• Database Throughput &
• Performance
• Backend Reliability
• Production Incident Count
• Test Coverage &
• Observability
• Payment Reconciliation Accuracy

Interview Process :

• Introductory &

Background Discussion

2.

System Design

Interview - Booking, availability, and payment architecture

3.

Performance Tuning Case

Study - Diagnose and optimise a slow query or API

4.

Code Review

Exercise - Review a backend PR and provide structured technical feedback

• Culture &
• Team Fit Discussion - Interaction with senior technology leadership