Backend Lead (Node.js)

zeely; United States; Remote; USD 160,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-first approach

Paid day offs and sick leaves

Regular performance reviews

Financial support for private ENTREPRE

Job summary

Zeely AI is seeking a Backend Lead to own and scale the backend platform powering our AI gateway and orchestration. You will lead the Backend Department, drive architectural direction, and mentor engineers across a high-load environment.

You will shape the AI orchestration layer, ensure reliability, latency, and cost efficiency, and collaborate closely with frontend, mobile, QA, AI engineering, and DevOps teams to achieve ambitious product goals. Remote-first with strong engineering culture.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of commercial experience with Node.js.
• 3+ years in a Lead, Team Lead, or Engineering Manager role with direct people management responsibilities.
• 3+ years with NestJS and microservice architectures in production environments.
• Proven expertise with PostgreSQL/Redis and ORMs such as Prisma/Drizzle.
• Hands-on AWS experience (EKS, RDS, SQS, S3, CloudWatch, OpenSearch).
• Strong Docker expertise and observable distributed systems design.
• Excellent English (Upper-Intermediate) speaking and writing.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Backend Department, driving team growth, planning, estimations, code reviews, mentoring, and engineers' performance management.
• Define architectural vision for reliability, scalability, and performance of the backend platform.
• Develop and evolve AI orchestration layer across models/providers, optimize generation quality, latency, and cost.
• Own evolution of the AI Gateway powering text, image, voice, avatar, and video generation.
• Scale infrastructure to support product growth and increasing workloads.
• Maintain high engineering standards in code quality, security, observability, and ops.
• Deliver strategic AI initiatives including RAG pipeline, MCP integrations, and AI agents.
• Collaborate with Frontend, Mobile, QA, AI Eng, and DevOps teams to hit business goals.
• Partner with Principal Engineer on capacity planning and cost optimization.

Skills

Node.js

Team Lead

NestJS

Microservices

PostgreSQL

Redis

Prisma/Drizzle

AWS

Docker

Distributed systems

On-call

English

Tools

OpenSearch

Job description

Join us as a Backend Lead and drive the development of the backend platform behind one of the fastest-growing AI products in the US market. We are looking for a strong technical leader who combines deep expertise in high-load system architecture with hands-on experience in building and scaling engineering teams.

In this role, you will have true ownership of our AI Gateway, generative pipelines, and mission-critical backend services powering a product already trusted by more than 1.5 million users.

Zeely AI is the agentic AI platform for creating, launching, and scaling paid ads.

Your key responsibilities:

• Lead the Backend Department, driving team growth, planning, estimations, code reviews, mentoring, and engineers' performance management

• Define the architectural vision and ensure the reliability, scalability, and performance of the backend platform

• Develop and evolve our AI orchestration layer across multiple models and providers, optimizing generation quality, latency, and cost efficiency

• Own the evolution of the AI Gateway — the core platform component powering text, image, voice, avatar, and video generation

• Scale infrastructure and backend services to support product growth and increasing workloads

• Maintain high engineering standards in code quality, security, observability, and operational excellence

• Deliver strategic AI initiatives, including our proprietary RAG pipeline, MCP integrations, and AI agent capabilities

• Collaborate closely with Frontend, Mobile, QA, AI Engineering, and DevOps teams to achieve business goals

• Partner with the Principal Engineer on infrastructure capacity planning and cost optimization

What we’re looking for:

• 7+ years of commercial experience with Node.js

• 3+ years of experience in a Lead, Team Lead, or Engineering Manager role with direct people management responsibilities

• 3+ years of hands-on experience with NestJS

• Proven experience designing and evolving microservice architectures in production environments

• Deep expertise in PostgreSQL and Redis

• Experience working with ORMs such as Prisma and Drizzle

• Hands‑on experience with AWS services, including EKS, RDS, SQS, S3, CloudWatch, and OpenSearch

• Strong Docker expertise

• Experience designing reliable, scalable, and observable distributed systems

• Solid understanding of on‑call processes and incident management practices

• Upper-Intermediate English level or higher

Nice to have:

• Active AWS Architect or Developer certification

• Experience with Terraform

• Experience building high-load systems and optimizing cost/latency trade-offs

• Payment systems integration experience

• Backend development experience for mobile applications (iOS/Android) and web products

• Experience with GCP and Cloudflare

• Experience hiring engineers and building processes in fast‑scaling organizations

AI expertise we value:

• Commercial experience integrating AI APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and others)

• Understanding of multi‑model orchestration, including routing, fallback strategies, and cost/latency trade‑offs

• Experience with AI‑assisted development and code review tools (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, etc.)

• Understanding of RAG, embeddings, MCP, and AI agents (hands‑on experience is a strong plus)

Why it’s exciting to work with us:

• Work with cutting‑edge technologies and contribute to building AI‑powered tools

• Join a strong A‑level team that motivates you to grow and achieve more

• Remote‑first approach: work from anywhere, with the option to visit our offices in Warsaw and Kyiv

• Paid day offs and sick leaves — we care about your work‑life balance

• Regular performance reviews to ensure your growth is transparent and rewarded

• Financial support — consultations for private entrepreneurs from our dedicated finance team

Recruitment process:

Intro Call → Test Task → Technical Interview → Final Interview → Reference Check → Offer