Senior Backend Engineer

Senior Backend Engineer

Role Overview

We are seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to architect, build, and scale a hybrid backend system designed for performance, reliability, and cost efficiency at scale.

You will work on a modern backend stack combining:

• Firestore for operational, real-time, document-based workloads
• SQL (PostgreSQL) for transactional, financial, and high-integrity data
• Node.js APIs & Cloud Functions
• Payment and subscription systems
• Analytics-ready data pipelines

This is not a CRUD-only role.
We are looking for someone who understands distributed systems, data modeling tradeoffs, performance bottlenecks, and cost optimization in production environments.

You will be expected to make architectural decisions, challenge assumptions, and build systems that scale cleanly and safely.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect and maintain a hybrid backend system (Firestore + SQL)
• Design and implement scalable Node.js APIs and Cloud Functions
• Build secure, reliable transactional and financial workflows
• Design data models optimized for performance, integrity, and cost
• Implement real-time features using Firestore and event-driven patterns
• Integrate and maintain payment and subscription systems
• Handle webhooks and asynchronous event flows safely and idempotently
• Optimize Firestore usage and cost at scale
• Ensure security best practices across authentication, authorization, and data access
• Design analytics-friendly data flows and pipelines
• Monitor, profile, and optimize backend performance
• Collaborate with product and frontend teams on system design and tradeoffs

RequirementsMust Have

• 5–8+ years of backend engineering experience
• Strong experience with Node.js in production
• Proven experience using Firebase / Firestore at scale
• Strong SQL skills (PostgreSQL preferred)
• Experience building transactional systems
• Solid REST API design experience
• Experience handling webhooks and asynchronous events
• Security-first mindset (auth, permissions, data protection)
• Strong understanding of distributed systems principles
• Experience working with real-time systems

Strong Plus

• Experience designing hybrid database architectures
• Experience with Stripe or similar payment providers
• Experience building marketplace or fintech systems
• Deep knowledge of Cloud Functions / serverless architectures
• Proven experience optimizing Firestore cost and performance
• Experience with event-driven architectures
• Experience designing subscription and billing systems
• Experience with caching layers (Redis or similar)
• Experience with search engines (Typesense, Elasticsearch, or similar)

What We’re Looking For

• Someone who thinks in systems, not just endpoints
• Comfortable making architectural tradeoffs and defending decisions
• Understands how bad data models become expensive at scale
• Writes clean, maintainable, and well-documented code
• Proactive about reliability, observability, and long-term scalability

Job Type: Full-time

Pay: AED3,000.00 - AED5,000.00 per month

Application Question(s):

• Have you built and maintained Node.js backends in a production environment?
• Have you used Firebase / Firestore in a production system with real users?
• Have you actively optimized Firestore usage to reduce cost or improve performance?
• Which best describes your experience with SQL databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc.)?
• Have you worked on a system that used both NoSQL (e.g., Firestore) and SQL databases together?
• Have you implemented or maintained payment systems (Stripe or similar) in production?
• Do you have experience handling webhooks safely (idempotency, retries, failures)?
• Have you built real-time features (subscriptions, live updates, sockets, or Firestore listeners)?
• Do you have hands-on experience with serverless architectures (Cloud Functions, Lambda, etc.)?
• Have you ever been responsible for backend architecture decisions in a production system?
• Briefly describe a backend system you worked on that required careful data modeling or scaling decisions.
• Do you have experience integrating search engines (Typesense, Elasticsearch, Algolia, etc.)?

Education:

• Bachelor's (Required)

Experience:

• backend engineering: 3 years (Required)

Language:

• english (Required)