Backend Expert (node.js)

intent

10h • Remote

About The Position

In short If you’re a backend engineer who doesn’t just build what’s asked but shapes how it’s built, we’d love to talk. We’re looking for someone who can own the technical direction of a project end to end: architecture, infrastructure, trade-offs, and the conversations that come with them. You’d be joining us on a freelance, time & material basis: you’re paid for the hours you actually work on real client projects. Full capacity from the start. The first three months are about getting to know each other: if it turns out we work well together, we’d love to bring you into our core team with a fixed monthly salary, paid time off, and the whole benefits package. Not a promise, a real possibility we actively root for. Why intent? We’ve been designing and co-creating connected devices since 2008. Wearables, smart audio, health-tech hardware for clients like Oura and BOSE, backed by investors like a16z and Founders Fund. We’re 60+ people, fully remote, and we’ve been AI-native since before LinkedIn influencers discovered the term. Our backend systems power the data layer behind physical products that people wear, listen to, and rely on every day. If you’ve ever designed a system that had to be right because a device on someone’s wrist depended on it, you already get why we love what we do.

Who this role is NOT for If your comfort zone is a well-defined Jira board, clear specs, and someone else making the architectural calls, this isn’t going to work. We’re not hiring a senior developer who executes well. We’re hiring someone who decides what gets built, how it gets built, and why. Someone who walks into a room full of ambiguity and starts creating structure, not waiting for it. If you need a ticket to start moving, if "that’s not in the requirements" is a sentence you use often, if you’d rather not be the one explaining a technical trade-off to a client: we’re probably not your people. We’re AI-native and we expect you to treat AI tools as a daily multiplier, not a gimmick. We look for engineers who ask "why" before "how", who challenge assumptions, and who occasionally break things because they were trying something better.

Requirements

• 7+ years of backend development experience, with a meaningful chunk spent leading technical direction, not just writing code
• Deep, hands-on AWS expertise: EKS, Aurora, DynamoDB, Timestream, S3, IAM. Not "I set up an EC2 once"
• Strong Node.js skills in production systems at scale
• Kubernetes (EKS), Docker, and Terraform: you’ve built and maintained real infrastructure, not just followed tutorials
• Solid understanding of distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and data pipelines
• Experience with MQTT or similar IoT messaging protocols
• CI/CD pipelines you’ve designed yourself (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions)
• English at B2+ minimum, written and spoken: you’ll be in rooms with US-based clients and you need to hold your own
• The ability to translate business needs into technical decisions and explain those decisions to non-technical stakeholders
• Strong opinions, loosely held: you propose direction, you defend it, and you change your mind when the evidence says you should

Nice To Haves

• Experience leading or bootstrapping a project from scratch as the sole or primary backend engineer
• Previous IoT, connected device, or hardware-adjacent projects
• Familiarity with time-series data, real-time streaming, or edge computing patterns
• Background in system design interviews or architecture review boards
• Contributions to open-source projects or technical writing that shows how you think
• Genuine curiosity about the physical devices your code powers, not just the services behind them, not just the services behind them

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the backend architecture for IoT projects: from data ingestion pipelines to API design to infrastructure decisions
• Make technical trade-off decisions and defend them clearly to the team and to clients
• Design and maintain cloud infrastructure on AWS (EKS, Aurora, DynamoDB, Timestream, S3) with production-grade reliability
• Lead technical discussions: RFCs, architecture reviews, post-mortems. Not because someone asked you to, but because you see the need
• Mentor other backend engineers, raise the bar on code quality, and set patterns others can follow
• Collaborate closely with firmware engineers, mobile developers, QA, PMs, and clients
• Use AI tools as part of your daily workflow, not as a party trick
• Challenge product and technical assumptions when something doesn’t make sense, even if it means a harder conversation

Benefits

• Truly flexible hours (most of the team works 10-18 CET, but you organize your day)
• Fully remote, with Warsaw office + Gdansk cowork if you want them
• Access to our internal knowledge-sharing: tech talks, experiments, side projects
• A genuine path to the core team: if the first 3 months go well, you get a permanent contract with a fixed monthly salary regardless of project availability, 26 days paid leave, 10 sick days, Saltus medical care, training budget, and mentoring budget

What This Job Offers

• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 11-50 employees