Senior/Expert Backend Developer (node.js)

intent

4d • Remote

About The Position

We’re currently seeking a passionate freelance Senior Backend Developer to join our projects ASAP. As a freelancer cooperating with intent, you'll have the opportunity to work on diverse IoT projects, leveraging your expertise in backend and cloud technologies. intent has over 15+ years of experience in conceptualizing, designing, and building apps for IoT and connected devices. We act as a specialized think partner for products at the intersection of physical and digital (such as wearables and IoT), working with companies like Oura, BOSE, and McIntosh audio systems. 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.

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.
• 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

• 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.

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

• 100% remote work & flexible working hours with core hours between 10:00 and 18:00 CET, with some client meetings scheduled up to 20:00 CET (approx. 2 per week).
• Knowledge-sharing initiatives.
• Paid holidays & sick leave.
• Training budget & career growth support.

What This Job Offers

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