We are looking for a hands-on Team Lead who enjoys coding and working closely with a small engineering team. This role is approximately 70% coding and 30% leadership, with a strong focus on building and optimizing high-traffic backend systems. Responsibilities * Design, develop, and optimize backend services using Node.js * Work on high-load systems (thousands of RPS) * Identify performance bottlenecks and improve system efficiency * Collaborate with self-managed infrastructure handling large-scale data * Mentor and support a small remote team (initially 2+ engineers) * Conduct code reviews and contribute to technical decision-making * Help onboard new team members and improve engineering practices * Use AI-assisted development tools (e.g. Copilot, Cursor) * Take ownership of features from design to production
✅ Requirements * 3+ years of backend development with Node.js * 1+ year of experience as Team Lead (or strong mentoring experience) * Proven experience working with high-traffic or scalable platforms * Experience leading or mentoring remote engineering teams * Strong understanding of system performance and scaling * Comfortable working outside fully managed cloud environments * English — B2 level or higher * Location: EU (required)
➕ Nice to have * Experience with Python * Experience with bare-metal / self-hosted infrastructure * Experience with distributed systems or event-driven architecture * Experience optimizing latency or performance-critical services
What we offer * Hands-on engineering role with real technical impact * Opportunity to shape architecture and development practices * Small team with fast decision-making * Work on performance-critical, large-scale systems * Modern AI-assisted development workflow * Remote collaboration within the EU
If you enjoy solving complex backend challenges and still want to stay close to the code — we’d love to hear from you.
