Lead Backend Engineer

The Challenge

We transform complex business problems into human centred solutions for early stage startups, enterprise ventures, and corporate partners.

You thrive on this stuff!

As part of our tight-knit team you’ll play an integral role in creating experiences that don’t just engage the end user, but completely blow them away.

The Role

You'll be the sole backend engineer on a product that's opening up an existing internal platform to a new, external user base. The stack is NestJS / TypeScript on Azure, and the current APIs were built to serve internal workflows only. Your job is to assess the current state of the backend, figure out what's solid, what's incomplete, and what needs rethinking - then own the plan and the delivery.

This is not a clean greenfield build. The codebase and its low-level details are only partially documented, and part of your value is getting oriented quickly in that ambiguity. You'll have a direct line to the client's technical leadership and collaborate closely with a DIJGTAL tech lead - but day-to-day, you're the one driving the backend forward.

Because you're the sole backend engineer, you'll need to make architectural decisions independently, communicate trade-offs clearly, and keep the frontend team unblocked. Seniority isn't just about code here - it's about owning a domain and being trusted to do it right.

What You’ll Do

Discovery & Scoping

• Assess the current state of an existing backend - what's production-ready, what's incomplete, and what needs rethinking
• Identify what has been built, what is incomplete, and what may need to be reworked
• Surface gaps between documented requirements and the actual codebase
• Produce a scoped implementation plan with realistic effort estimates before build begins
• Identify risks, dependencies, and blockers early so the team can plan around them

API Development

• Extend existing services with new endpoints to support a broader user base
• Design and build aggregation layers that simplify the frontend integration surface (backend-for-frontend pattern)
• Implement and extend authentication, identity, and authorisation flows
• Integrate with third-party services and external APIs as the product requires

Infrastructure & Platform

• Ensure APIs are correctly secured, rate-limited, and accessible to the consumers that need them
• Work within and maintain an existing infrastructure setup
• Understand data flows between upstream systems and the services you own, and how they affect what end users see

Collaboration & Communication

• Work directly with the client technical leadership as your primary technical stakeholder
• Collaborate with the DIJGTAL tech lead on architecture and integration decisions
• Surface blockers early, document decisions, and keep the frontend team unblocked throughout
• Define and maintain API contracts so the frontend team can build in parallel with confidence

What You’ll Bring

Experience

• 7+ years in backend engineering, with at least 2–3 years at a lead or principal level
• Proven experience doing technical discovery in an unfamiliar codebase - you can get oriented quickly and produce a credible assessment
• Proven experience extending multi-service REST APIs to support new consumer-facing products
• Comfortable as the sole backend engineer - you've made architectural decisions without a team around you and owned the outcome
• Experience with healthcare, fintech, or other regulated industries is a strong plus

Technical Skills

• NestJS and TypeScript - you've shipped production NestJS APIs and are comfortable working inside an existing codebase from day one
• REST API design - you've built and versioned APIs consumed by multiple clients
• Azure Functions (Node.js runtime) - or equivalent serverless/event-driven experience
• Azure infrastructure - AKS, Azure API Management, Azure Application Gateway
• Kubernetes (AKS): Experience configuring and managing clusters for horizontal scaling and production-grade high availability
• SQL Server / Azure SQL - schema design, query optimisation, CDC awareness
• Authentication and token management - OAuth2, JWT, session lifecycle
• Identity provider integration

Personal Attributes

• Treats the CTO and collaborating tech lead as peers - you surface issues, not just solutions
• Strong written communication - you document decisions and write clearly for mixed audiences
• Pragmatic - you work within existing systems rather than re-architecting them
• Proactive about risk - you flag blockers before they become problems
• Calm under ambiguity - requirements evolve and you adjust without losing momentum

Nice To Haves

• SQL CDC and Azure Functions event-driven architecture
• Firebase Cloud Messaging or Expo push notification experience
• Prior work in regulated industries - healthcare, fintech, or similar
• Compliance exposure - HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOC 2, or similar regulatory frameworks
• Experience designing APIs for both web and React Native mobile clients