Engineering Tech Lead Node.js Architect

Role: Engineering Tech Lead Node.js ArchitectLocation: Sheffield, UKContract (3 days a week Onsite)Job Description\n

Experience

\n

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.

\n

Job Summary:

\n

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.

\n

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.

\n

Key Responsibilities

\n

\n
• Lead the architecture, design, and development of mission-critical backend applications using Node.js.
\n
• Design scalable, secure, and highly available distributed systems and microservices.
\n
• Drive technical decision-making and define engineering standards across projects.
\n
• Collaborate with Product Managers, Architects, DevOps, QA, and cross-functional teams to deliver high-quality solutions.
\n
• Review code, enforce best practices, and ensure maintainability and performance of applications.
\n
• Mentor and guide engineering teams through technical challenges and career development.
\n
• Optimize application performance, scalability, reliability, and observability.
\n
• Design APIs and integration patterns for internal and external systems.
\n
• Establish CI/CD pipelines and promote DevSecOps practices.
\n
• Lead technical discussions on architecture, system trade-offs, and technology adoption.
\n
• Ensure applications meet security, compliance, and data privacy standards.
\n
• Participate in production support, incident management, and root cause analysis for critical issues.
\n

\n

?

\n

Required Technical Skills

\n

Node.js Expertise

\n

\n
• Strong expertise in Node.js runtime internals and asynchronous programming.
\n
• Deep understanding of:
\n
\n
• Event Loop
\n
• libuv
\n
• Worker Threads
\n
• Cluster module
\n
• Streams
\n
• Buffers
\n
• Memory management
\n
• Garbage collection
\n
\n
• Advanced knowledge of JavaScript (ES6+) and TypeScript.
\n
• Experience with backend frameworks such as:
\n
\n
• Express.js
\n
• NestJS
\n
• Fastify
\n
• Koa
\n
\n

\n

Architecture & System Design

\n

\n
• Strong understanding of software architecture principles and design patterns.
\n
• Experience designing:
\n
\n
• Microservices architecture
\n
• Event-driven systems
\n
• Domain-driven design (DDD)
\n
• Hexagonal/Clean Architecture
\n
• CQRS
\n
• Saga pattern
\n
• API Gateway patterns
\n
\n
• Experience building systems with high throughput and low latency.
\n
• Knowledge of scalability patterns including horizontal scaling, load balancing, and auto-scaling.
\n

\n

API & Integration

\n

\n
• RESTful API design
\n
• GraphQL
\n
• gRPC
\n
• WebSockets
\n
• OpenAPI/Swagger
\n
• API versioning strategies
\n
• Third-party system integrations
\n

\n

Databases

\n

Experience with both SQL and NoSQL databases:

\n

\n
• PostgreSQL
\n
• MySQL
\n
• MongoDB
\n
• Redis
\n
• Elasticsearch
\n

\n

Strong understanding of:

\n

\n
• Data modeling
\n
• Indexing
\n
• Query optimization
\n
• Transactions
\n
• Replication
\n
• Sharding
\n

\n

Messaging & Distributed Systems

\n

Hands-on experience with messaging platforms such as:

\n

\n
• Apache Kafka
\n
• RabbitMQ
\n
• AWS SQS/SNS
\n
• NATS
\n

\n

Understanding of:

\n

\n
• Event sourcing
\n
• Idempotency
\n
• Retry strategies
\n
• Dead-letter queues
\n
• Eventual consistency
\n

\n

Cloud & DevOps

\n

Experience with cloud platforms:

\n

\n
• AWS
\n
• Azure
\n
• Google Cloud Platform
\n

\n

Hands-on knowledge of:

\n

\n
• Docker
\n
• Kubernetes
\n
• Helm
\n
• Terraform
\n
• CI/CD pipelines
\n
• Infrastructure as Code
\n

\n

Observability & Performance

\n

Experience implementing:

\n

\n
• Centralized logging
\n
• Distributed tracing
\n
• Metrics collection
\n
• Monitoring dashboards
\n

\n

Knowledge of tools such as:

\n

\n
• Prometheus
\n
• Grafana
\n
• OpenTelemetry
\n
• ELK Stack
\n

\n

Ability to identify and resolve performance bottlenecks in Node.js applications.

\n

Security

\n

Strong understanding of:

\n

\n
• OAuth 2.0
\n
• OpenID Connect (OIDC)
\n
• JWT authentication
\n
• RBAC/ABAC
\n
• OWASP Top 10
\n
• Secure API development
\n
• Secrets management
\n
• Encryption best practices
\n

\n

?

\n

Leadership Expectations

\n

\n
• Lead and mentor engineering teams.
\n
• Conduct technical design reviews and code reviews.
\n
• Define engineering standards and best practices.
\n
• Drive architecture discussions and technology decisions.
\n
• Collaborate effectively with stakeholders across business and technology functions.
\n
• Foster a culture of quality, innovation, and continuous improvement.
\n

\n

?

\n

Preferred Qualifications

\n

\n
• Bachelors or Masters degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
\n
• Experience building large-scale enterprise or SaaS platforms.
\n
• Familiarity with serverless architectures and cloud-native development.
\n
• Exposure to AI/ML integrations or event streaming platforms is a plus.
\n
• Contributions to open-source projects or active participation in the Node.js community are desirable.
\n

\n
\n

JBRP1_UKTJ