Title: Tech Lead (Node.js and API) Location: Remote Work (Office Locations: Irving TX, Chicago IL, New York NY) || Need local candidates only Duration: 12 Months+
Only Independent contractors Required Experience Level: 12+ Years
The Role:
The Digital API team is looking for a hands-on Tech Lead with deep Node.js/TypeScript expertise to design and deliver domain-driven microservices for customer-facing digital experiences. You'll own greenfield builds from zero-to-production, lead engineers by example (coding ~70% of the time), and drive cross-team triage while keeping leadership proactively informed.
What You'll Do:
Design & build domain-driven, event-aware microservices in Node.js/TypeScript (Express/Fastify/NestJS) with clean, testable code.
Architect greenfield systems: service boundaries, data models, REST APIs, event streams, CI/CD, observability, and runtime topology.
Set API standards: versioning, OpenAPI/Swagger, pagination, error contracts, resiliency patterns (timeouts, retries, circuit breakers).
Own production readiness: SLOs, dashboards, alerting, runbooks; lead incident triage/bridge calls and drive blameless RCAs.
Collaborate across teams (web, mobile, data, security, ops) to unblock work, sequence dependencies, and land integrated releases.
Communicate proactively with leadership: crisp status, risk/mitigation, dependencies, and measurable outcomes.
Raise the bar: code reviews, engineering best practices, mentoring, pair programming, tech talks, and documentation.
Think two steps ahead: anticipate edge cases, scaling, operability, and cost; recommend pragmatic sequencing and trade-offs.
Tech Stack You'll Work With:
Languages/Frameworks: Node.js, TypeScript, Express/Fastify/NestJS
APIs: REST, OpenAPI/Swagger, OAuth2/OIDC, JWT
Data: PostgreSQL/MySQL, NoSQL (MongoDB/DynamoDB), Redis cache
Messaging/Streaming: Kafka/RabbitMQ (sagas, outbox, idempotency)
Cloud & Platform: One major cloud (AWS/Azure/Google Cloud Platform), Docker, Kubernetes, API Gateway/Ingress, IaC (Terraform/CloudFormation)
CI/CD & Observability: GitHub Actions/Jenkins, ELK/Dynatrace, feature flags, Open Telemetry, Datadog/New Relic/Prometheus, log aggregation
What You'll Bring:
8+ years backend engineering (or equivalent impact), 3+ years technical leadership on product teams.
Expert-level Node.js/TypeScript with proven delivery of domain-driven microservices at scale.
Strong grasp of DDD (entities/aggregates/bounded contexts), event-driven architectures, and microservice patterns (saga, outbox, circuit breaker).
Designed secure, resilient public APIs used by web/mobile clients; deep understanding of authN/authZ (OAuth2/OIDC), secrets, and TLS.
Production experience with Kubernetes and cloud-native deployment, CI/CD, and observability (metrics, traces, logs, SLOs).
Demonstrated success leading triage/incident response and driving RCAs to lasting improvements.
Outstanding communication able to simplify complex trade-offs, tell a delivery story, and keep partners aligned.
Bias for action: you go the extra mile, anticipate the next two steps, and ship high-quality software.
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