Senior / Principal Backend Engineer – Node.js, TypeScript & GraphQL Federation

Please note

Freelance / independent contractors are eligible for this assignment.
For an international retail organisation, we are looking for a Senior / Principal Backend Engineer.

Assignment
The organisation is further developing and professionalising digital platforms that are used internationally. For the backend engineering team, we are looking for a highly experienced engineer who can contribute hands-on within a complex, high-traffic and API-driven environment.

The backend consists of scalable services built primarily with Node.js and TypeScript, using both REST and GraphQL. The GraphQL landscape uses Apollo GraphQL Federation, where individual subgraphs form part of a wider supergraph architecture. You will work within this existing production architecture, contributing to its continued development, scalability, performance, reliability and maintainability.

This role goes beyond developing individual APIs or features. You should be comfortable analysing complex technical and architectural challenges, making engineering decisions and understanding their implications within a distributed microservices landscape. You will work alongside other experienced engineers and contribute to technical decision-making, backend architecture and the technical roadmap, while remaining actively involved in hands-on development.

The technical level within the team is high. We are therefore looking for an engineer who not only has experience with the technologies involved, but can also explain how and why particular engineering and architectural decisions were made and applied in production.

What will you be doing?

• Develop and maintain backend services using Node.js and TypeScript.
• Design and develop REST and GraphQL APIs.
• Work within an Apollo GraphQL Federation architecture involving subgraphs and a supergraph.
• Develop and optimise scalable microservices in a high-traffic environment.
• Contribute to backend performance, security, reliability and maintainability.
• Contribute to backend architecture and the technical roadmap.
• Work with CI/CD, automated testing and DevOps principles.
• Share technical knowledge and provide technical guidance to other engineers.

Please only apply if you meet the following requirements

• Minimum of years of experience as a Backend Software Engineer/Developer.
• Minimum of 2 years of hands-on production experience with Node.js.
• Extensive hands-on experience with TypeScript.
• Experience with REST and GraphQL in production environments.
• Experience developing scalable microservices.
• Experience working within an international organisation with more than 500 employees.
• Experience with environments where performance and availability are important technical requirements.
• Excellent command of the English language.

Technical context
Technical depth is an important part of the selection process. Hands-on experience with Apollo Federation, subgraphs and supergraphs is therefore particularly relevant for this assignment.

Experience with topics such as TypeScript type safety, distributed systems, caching and cache invalidation, data consistency, event-driven versus request-driven architectures, idempotency, retry mechanisms, delivery guarantees and resilience is also relevant when assessing the overall technical fit. The emphasis is not simply on familiarity with these concepts, but on understanding how they have been applied and which engineering trade-offs were made in production environments.

Experience within e-commerce, retail, marketplaces or comparable high-traffic digital platforms is highly relevant to the context of the assignment.

Assignment details Start: As soon as possible Duration: 3 months, with the possibility of extension until at least the end of 2026 Hours: 32–40 hours per week…

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