Senior Backend Engineer (TypeScript/Node.js) - Location Denver, CO - Onsite
Experience: 8+ years
About the Role
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.
Responsibilities
End-to-End Ownership
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
System Design & Architecture
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
Development
Strong proficiency in TypeScript and Node.js
Build high-throughput, low-latency microservices using frameworks like NestJS, Express, or Fastify
Write clean, type-safe, maintainable code - but more importantly, know when and what to build
Testing & Quality
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
Infrastructure & Cloud (AWS)
Hands-on with AWS services (ECS/EKS, Lambda, S3, SQS, CloudWatch, IAM)
Understand networking, security, and cost implications of architectural choices
Comfortable with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/CloudFormation)
Data & Messaging
Kafka - design event-driven architectures, manage topics, handle consumer lag and rebalancing
Redis - caching strategies, pub/sub, cluster management
MongoDB/DocumentDB - schema design, indexing, query optimization, aggregation pipelines
DynamoDB - single-table design, GSI/LSI strategies, capacity planning, streams
Monitoring & Observability
Datadog - build dashboards, set meaningful alerts, track SLOs, analyze APM traces
Splunk - log analysis, search queries, correlation across services for incident investigation
Understand distributed tracing, structured logging, and metric-driven decision making
SRE Mindset
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
Proactive Analysis & Innovation
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
Never miss an opportunity! Create an alert based on the job you applied for.
