Senior Software Engineer (Backend)

Book of the Month; New York (NY); On-site; USD 125,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Book of the Month's Engineering team builds customer-facing features for our website and mobile apps, as well as internal tools for fulfillment and other departments. We are looking for a Senior Backend Software Engineer to architect creative technical solutions, ensure consistent delivery of roadmapped features, and drive ongoing code quality and performance.

You will own end-to-end feature development, collaborate with stakeholders, and mentor engineers to scale our systems for hundreds of

Qualifications

• Proficient in building production-grade Node.js applications.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end feature and tool development for hundreds of thousands of users.
• Collaborate with product/design and engineers to deliver practical, cost-effective solutions on feasible timelines.
• Create detailed technical specifications for peer review and execution.
• Review and mentor peers to ensure scalable architectures and sound design patterns.
• Write performant code and guide code generation for high quality releases.
• Verify solutions across happy and unhappy paths and monitor post-release success.

Skills

Node.js

TypeScript

Relational databases

REST APIs

Test suites

SQL optimization

Redis

Kafka

SQS

Tools

MySQL

PostgreSQL

Redis

Kafka

SQS

Job description

The Engineering team at Book of the Month is responsible for developing and maintaining customer-facing features on our website and mobile applications as well as internal tools that support our fulfillment centers and other departments such as our Editorial, Customer Service, and Finance teams. We work closely with Product, Design, and our fellow engineers to drive projects from inception to launch, working on quick, iterative timelines to ensure quality while maximizing business impact.

We are looking for a Senior Backend Software Engineer to architect creative technical solutions to complex problems, ensure consistent delivery of roadmapped features, and seek constant improvement of our code’s efficacy, performance, and maintainability.

What you will do…

• Own the end-to-end creation of features and tools that reach hundreds of thousands of users.
• Collaborate closely with technical and non-technical stakeholders to find practical, cost-effective solutions that meet business needs in feasible timelines.
• Create detailed, comprehensive technical specifications outlining well thought-out solutions for review by peers & execution by orchestrated agentic workflows.
• Review technical specifications of other developers to ensure success of their projects along with your own, mentoring other engineers to architect for scalability, follow good design patterns, and uncover edge cases.
• Write code and direct code generation to implement approved solutions at high code-quality standards.
• Verify solutions at every step of the development process, considering both happy and unhappy paths, & monitoring success after release.

Minimum Qualifications: 6+ years in…

• Developing high-quality, production code using Node.js.
• Utilizing TypeScript to ensure integrity of API contracts, store clean data, and future-proof projects for low-lift expansion while avoiding regressions.
• Modeling data in relational databases such as MySQL or PostgreSQL and evolving schemas safely against live production data.
• Designing and versioning REST APIs with clear, reliable contracts and consistent backward compatibility.
• Building and maintaining test suites rigorous enough to be trusted as a quality gate for production release.
• Prioritizing efficiency by optimizing SQL, minimizing DB trips, managing in-memory load, and utilizing third-party services such as Redis, Kafka, and SQS.

About you…

• Solution-oriented: Enjoys tackling problems, breaking them down into pieces, and finding innovative ways to use ever-evolving technologies to solve them.
• Excited by ownership: Embraces the prospect of creating something from scratch, owning its development, and ensuring its quality to end users.
• Undeterred by ambiguity: Sees complex problems as opportunities for growth rather than obstacles, driving a solution forward no matter how complicated the path.
• Team player: Collaborates with others and picks up new skills to help out when needed, whether that be nailing down reproduction steps of a bug, creating a frontend component, or hunting down a gap in our data for analytics.

Salary Range: $125,000 - $180,000