Job Description
Role: Engineering Tech Lead Node.js ArchitectLocation: Sheffield, UKContract (3 days a week Onsite)Job Description
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Experience
1015+ years of software development experience with at least 5+ years of hands-on expertise in Node.js and experience leading engineering teams and large-scale backend platforms.
Job Summary:
We are seeking a highly skilled Engineering Tech Lead Node.js to lead the design, development, and evolution of scalable, high-performance backend systems. The ideal candidate should possess deep technical expertise in the Node.js ecosystem, strong architectural and system design capabilities, and proven experience leading engineering teams through complex technical challenges.
This role requires a hands-on leader who can drive technical strategy, mentor engineers, establish engineering best practices, and architect distributed systems capable of handling enterprise-scale workloads.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the architecture, design, and development of mission-critical backend applications using Node.js.
Design scalable, secure, and highly available distributed systems and microservices.
Drive technical decision-making and define engineering standards across projects.
Collaborate with Product Managers, Architects, DevOps, QA, and cross-functional teams to deliver high-quality solutions.
Review code, enforce best practices, and ensure maintainability and performance of applications.
Mentor and guide engineering teams through technical challenges and career development.
Optimize application performance, scalability, reliability, and observability.
Design APIs and integration patterns for internal and external systems.
Establish CI/CD pipelines and promote DevSecOps practices.
Lead technical discussions on architecture, system trade-offs, and technology adoption.
Ensure applications meet security, compliance, and data privacy standards.
Participate in production support, incident management, and root cause analysis for critical issues.
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Required Technical Skills
Node.js Expertise
- Strong expertise in Node.js runtime internals and asynchronous programming.
Deep understanding of:
libuv
Worker Threads
Cluster module
Streams
Buffers
Memory management
Garbage collection
Advanced knowledge of JavaScript (ES6+) and TypeScript.
Experience with backend frameworks such as:
NestJS
Fastify
Koa
Architecture & System Design
- Strong understanding of software architecture principles and design patterns.
Experience designing:
- Microservices architecture
Event-driven systems
Domain-driven design (DDD)
Hexagonal/Clean Architecture
CQRS
Saga pattern
API Gateway patterns
Experience building systems with high throughput and low latency.
Knowledge of scalability patterns including horizontal scaling, load balancing, and auto-scaling.
API & Integration
GraphQL
gRPC
WebSockets
OpenAPI/Swagger
API versioning strategies
Third-party system integrations
Databases
Experience with both SQL and NoSQL databases:
MySQL
MongoDB
Redis
Elasticsearch
Strong understanding of:
Indexing
Query optimization
Transactions
Replication
Sharding
Messaging & Distributed Systems
Hands-on experience with messaging platforms such as:
RabbitMQ
AWS SQS/SNS
NATS
Understanding of:
Idempotency
Retry strategies
Dead-letter queues
Eventual consistency
Cloud & DevOps
Experience with cloud platforms:
Azure
Google Cloud Platform
Hands-on knowledge of:
Kubernetes
Helm
Terraform
CI/CD pipelines
Infrastructure as Code
Observability & Performance
Experience implementing:
Distributed tracing
Metrics collection
Monitoring dashboards
Knowledge of tools such as:
Grafana
OpenTelemetry
ELK Stack
Ability to identify and resolve performance bottlenecks in Node.js applications.
Security
Strong understanding of:
OpenID Connect (OIDC)
JWT authentication
RBAC/ABAC
OWASP Top 10
Secure API development
Secrets management
Encryption best practices
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Leadership Expectations
- Lead and mentor engineering teams.
Conduct technical design reviews and code reviews.
Define engineering standards and best practices.
Drive architecture discussions and technology decisions.
Collaborate effectively with stakeholders across business and technology functions.
Foster a culture of quality, innovation, and continuous improvement.
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Preferred Qualifications
- Bachelors or Masters degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
Experience building large-scale enterprise or SaaS platforms.
Familiarity with serverless architectures and cloud-native development.
Exposure to AI/ML integrations or event streaming platforms is a plus.
Contributions to open-source projects or active participation in the Node. xwwtmva js community are desirable.