Lead Backend Engineer - AWS Serverless (Node.js/TypeScript)
Role summary
We are seeking a Lead Backend Engineer with staff-level or architect-level experience to join a senior team and drive the architecture and delivery of a high-scale AWS serverless platform. This hands-on role involves owning end-to-end delivery of production systems, designing APIs, building resilient event-driven services, and making key engineering tradeoffs. The ideal candidate will have 3+ years of experience building and operating production serverless systems on AWS, strong Node.js/TypeScript skills, and experience with Infrastructure as Code tools like Serverless Framework or AWS CDK. The position is US-based, full-time, and remote, requiring high ownership and autonomous work.
About the role
We're hiring a lead backend engineer (staff-level or architect-level experience) to own architecture and delivery on a high-scale AWS serverless platform handling 100M+ events per day. This is a hands-on, high-ownership role - you'll drive technical direction, make real architecture decisions, and ship production systems end to end. We're specifically looking for engineers who have personally designed and operated production serverless systems on AWS. This is the core of the work, not a line item on a longer list. You'll join a small, senior team where your decisions have immediate impact and real scope from day one. Interview process is fast and technical. We're looking to bring someone on within 2–4 weeks.
What you will do
- Lead backend architecture across Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, EventBridge, SQS, Step Functions
- Design and build APIs (REST/GraphQL) supporting high-volume web and mobile workloads
- Own end-to-end delivery from system design through production rollout and operational support
- Build resilient event-driven services with strong observability, retry logic, idempotency, and fault tolerance
- Make real engineering tradeoffs around cost, performance, reliability, and complexity
- Set patterns, mentor other engineers, and drive technical standards
- Collaborate with product and engineering stakeholders to translate requirements into durable systems
What we are looking for
- 8+ years backend engineering experience -
staff-level or architect-level experience
- 3+ years building production AWS serverless event-driven systems. You should have designed and operated real systems at scale.
- Personally designed systems using Lambda, API Gateway, Step Functions, DynamoDB, SQS/SNS, EventBridge
- Architecture ownership - you were the decision-maker, not just an implementer
- Strong backend engineering with Node.js and TypeScript
- Hands-on experience with Serverless Framework or AWS CDK for infrastructure as code and deployment automation
- Strong spoken and written English - you will lead technical discussions with clients and engineers
- Comfortable working autonomously with high ownership and high standards
- Familiarity with AI-first development workflows and tools (Copilot, Claude, Cursor) - we ship faster with them and expect you to as well
- US-based, full-time availability, remote
Technical stack (high level)
- Node.js / TypeScript
- AWS serverless services (Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, EventBridge, SQS, Step Functions)
- Infrastructure as code and automated delivery pipelines
- Event-driven architecture patterns
Nice to have
- Enterprise-scale serverless (compliance, operational rigor, multi-team coordination — not just startups or side projects)
- Consumer or mobile-backed systems at millions of daily users/requests
- Operational excellence practices (runbooks, incident response, SLOs, on-call)
- Multi-service orchestration and cross-service event-driven patterns
- Experience supporting high-traffic consumer or mobile-backed applications
How to apply
Send your resume or LinkedIn profile and answer these - short and specific:
- One production serverless system you personally designed on AWS - your exact role, the services you used, and the scale it operated at
- One hard backend problem or incident you solved - what broke, what you did, and the tradeoff you made
- Your availability and hourly rate expectations