API Engineering Lead – Node.js (NestJS/Express)

Arka Innovate; Atlanta (GA); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Arka Innovate in Atlanta, Georgia, is seeking an experienced API Lead to spearhead the design and delivery of scalable, cloud-native APIs and backend services within the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) domain. The role involves leading teams and ensuring efficient architecture for digital commerce and customer engagement platforms.

The ideal candidate will thrive in a hybrid work environment and demonstrate strong technical leadership, backend expertise with Node.js, NestJS, and experience in microservices architecture.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience with strong backend development expertise.
• 3+ years of experience leading API and backend engineering teams.
• Strong hands-on experience with Node.js, NestJS, Kafka, and Express.js.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and delivery of enterprise-grade APIs using NestJS and Express.js.
• Architect scalable backend services for digital platforms.
• Mentor development teams through code reviews and technical discussions.

Skills

Backend development

Leadership

Node.js

NestJS

Microservices Architecture

Event-Driven Architectures

SQL

NoSQL

Tools

Kafka

GCP

Azure

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Arka is seeking an experienced API Lead to design, develop, and lead the delivery of scalable, cloud-native APIs and backend services for large-scale digital commerce, loyalty, and customer engagement platforms within the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) domain.

This role focuses on building high-performance APIs, event-driven systems, and microservices using Node.js, NestJS, and Express.js. The ideal candidate will have strong experience in distributed systems, cloud-native architectures, API governance, and leading engineering teams to deliver resilient and scalable solutions across web and mobile platforms.

Hybrid Opportunity - 4 days a week at onsite.

Key Responsibilities

API & Backend Leadership

• Lead the design, development, and delivery of enterprise-grade APIs using NestJS and Express.js.
• Define and enforce API standards, best practices, versioning strategies, and governance models.
• Architect scalable and reusable backend services supporting digital ordering, loyalty, identity, payments, and customer engagement platforms.
• Mentor and guide development teams through code reviews, technical design discussions, and architecture reviews.
• Collaborate with architects and product teams to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions.

Microservices & Event-Driven Architecture

• Design and implement microservices-based architectures for high-volume, customer-facing applications.
• Build and maintain event-driven systems using messaging, pub-sub, and asynchronous communication patterns.
• Define strategies for event modeling, service orchestration, and distributed transaction management.
• Ensure services support resiliency patterns including retries, circuit breakers, idempotency, and fault tolerance.
• Drive architecture decisions related to scalability, performance, and system reliability.

Cloud-Native Engineering

• Design and deploy cloud-native applications on Azure, AWS, or GCP.
• Leverage cloud services for compute, messaging, API management, storage, and monitoring.
• Partner with DevOps and SRE teams to implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC), CI/CD pipelines, and automated deployments.
• Ensure backend systems meet enterprise standards for security, availability, scalability, and compliance.

Data & Integration

• Design and implement efficient data models for transactional and event-driven workloads.
• Work with both SQL and NoSQL databases to support high-throughput applications.
• Integrate with internal and external platforms through REST APIs, event streams, and third-party services.
• Optimize data access patterns and service interactions for performance and reliability.

Quality, Security & Observability

• Establish engineering best practices for testing, code quality, and deployment readiness.
• Implement logging, monitoring, tracing, and alerting strategies for production systems.
• Ensure secure API design through authentication, authorization, encryption, and industry-standard security practices.
• Drive adoption of observability and operational excellence across backend services.

Collaboration & Delivery

• Lead technical planning, estimation, and execution in Agile environments.
• Collaborate with product owners, architects, frontend teams, QA, and platform engineering teams.
• Support technical roadmaps and contribute to continuous improvement initiatives.
• Act as a technical leader for backend and API engineering efforts across multiple projects.

Qualifications & Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience with strong backend development expertise.
• 3+ years of experience leading API and backend engineering teams. Strong hands-on experience with Node.js, NestJS, KAFKA and Express.js.
• Proven experience designing and implementing Microservices Architecture.
• Strong experience building and supporting Event-Driven Architectures. Deep understanding of REST API design, API security, and API lifecycle management.
• Experience with asynchronous processing, messaging systems, and distributed system patterns.
• Strong knowledge of SQL and NoSQL databases.
• Hands-on experience with at least one major cloud platform: Azure, AWS, or GCP. Experience with CI/CD pipelines, Git workflows, and Agile development methodologies.
• Strong understanding of scalability, resiliency, and performance optimization techniques.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in QSR, Retail, Hospitality, E-commerce, or Consumer Digital platforms.
• Experience with Kafka, RabbitMQ, Azure Service Bus, AWS SNS/SQS, EventBridge, or similar messaging platforms.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and container orchestration platforms. Familiarity with API Gateway solutions and API management platforms.
• Knowledge of OAuth2, JWT, OpenID Connect, and enterprise authentication patterns. Experience with Terraform or other Infrastructure as Code tools.
• Exposure to loyalty, customer engagement, identity, and payment platforms.
• Strong communication, stakeholder management, and technical leadership skills.

At Arka Innovate, we are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected status.