Tech Lead (Node.js and API) | Texas

Key Responsibilities:

1. Lead Node.js API Development:
   • Design, implement, and optimize scalable RESTful APIs using Node.js and Express.js (or similar frameworks).
   • Architect API systems for maximum scalability, resilience, and performance.
   • Ensure that APIs are modular, reusable, and easy to maintain.
   • Integrate with third-party services, databases, and other internal systems.
2. Resilience Engineering:
   • Apply principles of resilience engineering to design APIs that gracefully handle failures and continue to perform under stress.
   • Implement retry logic, circuit breakers, and rate-limiting to ensure the APIs can withstand transient failures.
   • Use techniques such as load balancing, failover mechanisms, and distributed architectures to improve fault tolerance.
3. Monitoring & Observability:
   • Set up and maintain real-time monitoring and alerting using tools like Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack, Datadog, or New Relic.
   • Ensure comprehensive logging, tracing, and metrics collection (e.g., through OpenTelemetry, Jaeger, or Zipkin) to provide visibility into system health.
   • Proactively identify bottlenecks or performance issues and implement optimizations.
   • Collaborate with the DevOps team to ensure system health and visibility across all environments.
4. API Security:
   • Implement security best practices for API development (e.g., OAuth2, JWT tokens, rate limiting, IP whitelisting, and API gateways).
   • Regularly perform code reviews and audits to ensure security vulnerabilities are mitigated.
5. Team Leadership & Collaboration:
   • Lead and mentor a team of Node.js developers, providing technical guidance, code reviews, and career development.
   • Drive adoption of best practices in API development, monitoring, and resilience across the team.
   • Collaborate with cross-functional teams including front-end developers, DevOps, and QA to deliver high-quality software.
   • Participate in sprint planning, backlog grooming, and retrospectives to ensure the team is aligned and focused on the right goals.
6. Continuous Improvement:
   • Evaluate and recommend new technologies, tools, and frameworks that can improve development efficiency, monitoring capabilities, or resilience.
   • Foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement within the development team.
   • Ensure the team adopts DevOps practices and that software is fully automated for CI/CD pipelines.

 

Skills & Qualifications:

• Essential:
  • 5+ years of experience in Node.js development, with at least 2+ years of experience in a leadership role.
  • Strong expertise in designing and building RESTful APIs using Node.js.
  • Experience in building highly available, fault-tolerant systems that can handle production-level traffic.
  • Proficiency in monitoring and observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack, Datadog, New Relic).
  • Experience with resilience patterns such as circuit breakers, retry logic, and rate limiting.
  • Deep understanding of API security best practices (OAuth2, JWT, API Gateways, etc.).
  • Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and serverless architectures.
  • Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and tools (Jenkins, GitLab, CircleCI, etc.).
  • Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to troubleshoot complex distributed systems.
  • Strong communication skills and the ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams.
• Desirable:
  • Experience with containerization and orchestration tools like Docker and Kubernetes.
  • Familiarity with microservices architecture and event-driven systems.
  • Experience working with NoSQL and relational databases (MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc.).
  • Knowledge of automated testing and frameworks for Node.js (Mocha, Chai, Jest).
  • Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation).
  • Knowledge of distributed tracing and service meshes (e.g., Istio, Linkerd).

 

Compensation, Benefits and Duration

Minimum Compensation: USD 46,000
Maximum Compensation: USD 161,000
Compensation is based on actual experience and qualifications of the candidate. The above is a reasonable and a good faith estimate for the role.
Medical, vision, and dental benefits, 401k retirement plan, variable pay/incentives, paid time off, and paid holidays are available for full time employees.
This position is available for independent contractors
No applications will be considered if received more than 120 days after the date of this post.