Senior Backend Developer (freelance)

intent

6h • $90 - $180 • Remote

About The Position

We are seeking a Senior Backend Developer who will own the technical direction of a project end-to-end, including architecture, infrastructure, and trade-offs. This is a freelance, time & material position with the potential for a permanent contract and full benefits if the initial three months are a good match. Intent specializes in designing and co-creating connected devices, with a focus on AI-native solutions and complex backend systems that support physical devices and data pipelines.

Requirements

• 7+ years of backend development experience, with significant experience leading technical direction.
• Strong Node.js skills in production systems at scale.
• Deep, hands-on AWS expertise: EKS, Aurora, DynamoDB, Timestream, S3.
• Experience with Kubernetes (EKS), Docker, and Terraform for building and maintaining infrastructure.
• Solid understanding of distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and data pipelines.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines designed by yourself (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins).
• English proficiency at B2+ level, written and spoken.
• Ability to translate business needs into technical decisions and explain them to non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to propose direction, defend it, and change your mind based on evidence.

Nice To Haves

• Previous IoT or connected device projects, especially involving telemetry at scale.
• Golang experience in production.
• Observability stack experience (tracing, metrics, structured logging).
• Security mindset for cloud-connected devices (secrets, mTLS, OTA updates).
• Genuine curiosity about the devices your backend interacts with.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the backend architecture for IoT projects, including data ingestion pipelines, API design, and infrastructure decisions.
• Make technical trade-off calls and defend them clearly to the team and clients.
• Design and maintain cloud infrastructure on AWS (EKS, Aurora, DynamoDB, Timestream, S3) with production-grade reliability.
• Lead technical discussions, including RFCs, architecture reviews, and post-mortems.
• Mentor other backend engineers, raise the bar on code quality, and set patterns for others to follow.
• Work collaboratively with firmware engineers, mobile developers, QA, PMs, and clients.
• Utilize AI tools as part of the daily workflow.
• Challenge product and technical assumptions when necessary.

Benefits

• 90-180 PLN/h net B2B (freelance rate)
• Truly flexible hours
• Fully remote work
• Access to internal knowledge-sharing (tech talks, experiments, side projects)
• Potential path to a permanent contract with a fixed monthly salary, 26 days paid leave, 10 sick days, Saltus medical care, and a training budget (after initial freelance period)

What This Job Offers

• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed