Senior Backend Developer (Node.js)

About the client

Our client is reimagining how people discover and experience events. Its product is a unified mobile and web platform that brings discovery, community and commerce together in one place. Think of it as the TikTok of events: a hub where users explore local happenings, connect with communities and share social experiences.

The company is growing its engineering team and needs a senior backend engineer to take ownership of the platform’s core systems and technical direction.

The role

This is a senior role with a path to CTO. You will own the platform’s backend architecture, its performance and its reliability, and you will shape how the engineering team builds and ships. Day to day, that means designing APIs, managing data flow across services, and making sure every interaction, from event discovery to user engagement, is fast, secure and scalable. You will work closely with the frontend and mobile engineers and with leadership on where the product goes next.

Key responsibilities

Technical leadership

• Own the backend architecture and the technical decisions behind it.
• Shape the technical roadmap with leadership.
• Set engineering standards for code quality, testing and deployment.
• Lead and mentor other engineers on the team.
• Review code and system designs across the platform.

Backend engineering

• Architect and scale the platform’s core backend systems.
• Build and maintain scalable backend services in Node.js, with TypeScript preferred.
• Design and implement RESTful and GraphQL APIs for mobile and web clients.
• Manage data storage across relational databases such as PostgreSQL and MySQL.
• Manage data storage across non-relational databases such as MongoDB and DynamoDB.
• Develop efficient caching, queuing and notification systems for real-time experiences.
• Implement CI/CD pipelines, testing workflows and DevOps best practices.
• Ensure application performance, security and reliability across environments.

Requirements

• Previous experience as a CTO, head of engineering or tech lead, ideally at a startup.
• Proven experience leading an engineering team, including mentoring engineers and setting delivery priorities.
• Track record of owning architecture decisions on a live product.
• Senior-level experience building and scaling backend systems with Node.js and Express or NestJS.
• Strong understanding of API design.
• Strong understanding of authentication and authorisation.
• Strong understanding of microservices.
• Experience with SQL and NoSQL databases, including data modelling and optimisation.
• Familiarity with serverless architectures such as AWS Lambda and Firebase Functions.
• Familiarity with containerisation using Docker.
• Working knowledge of CI/CD, Git and modern deployment pipelines.
• Strong problem-solving and debugging skills.
• Clear communicator with both engineers and non-technical leadership.

Nice to have

• Experience with event-driven systems such as Kafka, RabbitMQ or Pub/Sub.
• Exposure to AWS, GCP or Firebase cloud ecosystems.
• Knowledge of mobile app backend integration.
• Experience with social media-style platforms.

Growth opportunities

The role has a clear path to CTO as the company grows. You will work with a modern stack covering REST and GraphQL, server and serverless, CI/CD, and relational and NoSQL databases.

Contract and compensation

• Initial term of 3 months, full-time.
• Possible extension or long-term offer, based on performance and project needs.
• Remote to start, with a possible move to hybrid in Lagos.