API Lead

API Lead – Node.js (NestJS/Express), Microservices & Event-Driven Architecture

Location: Atlanta, GA (Mon to Thu in Office)

Job Summary

Photon is seeking an experienced API Lead to design, develop, and lead the delivery of scalable, cloud-native APIs and backend services for large-scale digital commerce, loyalty, and customer engagement platforms within the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) domain.

This role focuses on building high-performance APIs, event-driven systems, and microservices using Node.js, NestJS, and Express.js. The ideal candidate will have strong experience in distributed systems, cloud-native architectures, API governance, and leading engineering teams in delivering resilient and scalable solutions across web and mobile platforms.

Key Responsibilities

API & Backend Leadership

• Lead the design, development, and delivery of enterprise-grade APIs using NestJS and Express.js.
• Define and enforce API standards, best practices, versioning strategies, and governance models.
• Architect scalable and reusable backend services supporting digital ordering, loyalty, identity, payments, and customer engagement platforms.
• Mentor and guide development teams through code reviews, technical design discussions, and architecture reviews.
• Collaborate with architects and product teams to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions.

Microservices & Event-Driven Architecture

• Design and implement microservices-based architectures for high-volume, customer-facing applications.
• Build and maintain event-driven systems using messaging, pub-sub, and asynchronous communication patterns.
• Define strategies for event modeling, service orchestration, and distributed transaction management.
• Ensure services support resiliency patterns including retries, circuit breakers, idempotency, and fault tolerance.
• Drive architecture decisions related to scalability, performance, and system reliability.

Cloud-Native Engineering

• Design and deploy cloud-native applications on Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud Platform.
• Leverage cloud services for compute, messaging, API management, storage, and monitoring.
• Partner with DevOps and SRE teams to implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC), CI/CD pipelines, and automated deployments.
• Ensure backend systems meet enterprise standards for security, availability, scalability, and compliance.

Data & Integration

• Design and implement efficient data models for transactional and event-driven workloads.
• Work with both SQL and NoSQL databases to support high-throughput applications.
• Integrate with internal and external platforms through REST APIs, event streams, and third-party services.
• Optimize data access patterns and service interactions for performance and reliability.

Quality, Security & Observability

• Establish engineering best practices for testing, code quality, and deployment readiness.
• Implement logging, monitoring, tracing, and alerting strategies for production systems.
• Ensure secure API design through authentication, authorization, encryption, and industry-standard security practices.
• Drive adoption of observability and operational excellence across backend services.

Collaboration & Delivery

• Lead technical planning, estimation, and execution in Agile environments.
• Collaborate with product owners, architects, frontend teams, QA, and platform engineering teams.
• Support technical roadmaps and contribute to continuous improvement initiatives.
• Act as a technical leader for backend and API engineering efforts across multiple projects.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with strong backend development expertise.
• 3+ years of experience leading API and backend engineering teams.
• Strong hands-on experience with Node.js, NestJS, and Express.js.
• Proven experience designing and implementing Microservices Architecture.
• Strong experience building and supporting Event-Driven Architectures.
• Deep understanding of REST API design, API security, and API lifecycle management.
• Experience with asynchronous processing, messaging systems, and distributed system patterns.
• Strong knowledge of SQL and NoSQL databases.
• Hands-on experience with at least one major cloud platform: Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud Platform.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, Git workflows, and Agile development methodologies.
• Strong understanding of scalability, resiliency, and performance optimization techniques.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in QSR, Retail, Hospitality, E-commerce, or Consumer Digital platforms.
• Experience with Kafka, RabbitMQ, Azure Service Bus, AWS SNS/SQS, Event Bridge, or similar messaging platforms.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and container orchestration platforms.
• Familiarity with API Gateway solutions and API management platforms.
• Knowledge of OAuth2, JWT, OpenID Connect, and enterprise authentication patterns.
• Experience with Terraform or other Infrastructure as Code tools.
• Exposure to loyalty, customer engagement, identity, and payment platforms.
• Strong communication, stakeholder management, and technical leadership skills.