Principal Software Engineer (Node.js Backend)

About the Role

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer with deep expertise in Node.js backend development and strong database engineering skills to join a high-performing engineering team. As a Principal Engineer, you will be a hands-on technical leader who owns the design, architecture, and delivery of complex backend systems that power large-scale digital platforms.

You will act as a force multiplier for your team — driving technical strategy, mentoring senior engineers, setting engineering standards, and shipping production-grade systems that are highly available, performant, and secure. This is a senior individual-contributor role with broad architectural influence across the platform.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, architect, and deliver scalable, fault-tolerant Node.js backend services and APIs that handle high-volume, low-latency workloads.
• Own the end-to-end technical design of services within your team, including data models, API contracts, integration patterns, and operational characteristics.
• Lead the design and optimization of relational and NoSQL database systems — schema design, query tuning, indexing strategy, sharding, and replication.
• Drive engineering excellence: code quality, automated testing, CI/CD, observability, security, and SRE-style operational ownership.
• Mentor and coach senior and intermediate engineers; conduct deep technical reviews of designs, code, and architectural proposals.
• Partner with Product Managers, Architects, SREs, Security, and Data Engineering teams to translate business goals into robust technical solutions.
• Troubleshoot and resolve highly complex production issues across distributed systems and propose efficient, durable engineering solutions.
• Contribute to the technology roadmap, evaluate and introduce new technologies, and define patterns and standards adopted across multiple teams.
• Champion DevSecOps, cloud-native development, and modern delivery practices.
• Document architectural decisions, runbooks, and reusable patterns to scale knowledge across the engineering organization.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).
• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience building backend services in production.
• 5+ years of hands-on Node.js development with strong command of asynchronous patterns, event loop behavior, streams, and performance tuning.
• Deep, demonstrable expertise in SQL and relational database design (PostgreSQL, MySQL, or MS SQL Server) — including complex queries, stored procedures, indexing, query plan analysis, and performance optimization.
• Proven experience designing and operating distributed systems, microservices, and event-driven architectures at scale.
• Strong experience with RESTful API design and at least one of GraphQL, gRPC, or message-based APIs.
• Experience with at least one major cloud platform (AWS, GCP, or Azure) in production.
• Strong understanding of software engineering fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, design patterns, concurrency, and system design.
• Track record of technical leadership — owning architecture, mentoring engineers, and influencing decisions across teams.
• Excellent analytical and troubleshooting skills for highly complex production issues.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to articulate trade-offs to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Preferred / Nice-to-Have

• Experience in fintech, banking, brokerage, trading, or other regulated financial services environments.
• Experience with TypeScript in large Node.js codebases.
• Familiarity with NoSQL databases (MongoDB, DynamoDB, Cassandra) and caching layers (Redis, Memcached).
• Experience with high-frequency data streaming and real-time systems (Kafka, Kinesis, RabbitMQ).
• Exposure to data engineering, analytics pipelines, or ML/AI integration in production.
• Experience with multi-region, high-availability deployments and disaster recovery design.
• Contributions to open-source projects or technical writing/speaking experience.

Technical Skills & Tools

• Languages & Runtimes: Node.js (Expert) — Express, NestJS, Fastify, or Koa; JavaScript (ES2020+), TypeScript; SQL (Expert) — ANSI SQL, T-SQL, or PL/pgSQL; familiarity with Python, Go, Java, or C# is a plus.
• Databases & Data Stores: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL Server, Oracle, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Cassandra, Redis, Memcached, Elasticsearch / OpenSearch; database design, indexing, query optimization, and migration tools (Liquibase, Flyway, Knex, Sequelize, TypeORM, Prisma).
• Cloud, Infrastructure & DevOps: GCP, or AWS; Docker, Kubernetes, Helm; Terraform, CloudFormation, or Pulumi; CI/CD with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or CircleCI; observability with Datadog, New Relic, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK / OpenSearch, Splunk.
• APIs, Messaging & Architecture: REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSockets; Kafka, RabbitMQ, AWS SQS/SNS, Kinesis; microservices, event-driven architecture, CQRS, Saga patterns; API gateways, service mesh (Istio, Linkerd); OAuth2, OIDC, JWT.
• Testing, Quality & Security: Jest, Mocha, Chai, Supertest, Pact, Cypress, k6, JMeter, Gatling; ESLint, SonarQube; OWASP Top 10, secure coding, secrets management (Vault, AWS Secrets Manager).
• Tools & Methodologies: Git, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket; Jira, Confluence; Agile / Scrum / Kanban; DevSecOps and continuous delivery.