# Backend Lead (Node.js)

[Zeely](https://gurify.com/jobs?q=Zeely) · Posted 3 months ago

Remote

Lead

[Backend](https://gurify.com/jobs/backend)

[JavaScript](https://gurify.com/jobs/javascript)

[Apply on the original posting → (opens in a new tab)](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/zeely/192b8f44-f011-49ec-8370-62333c35ad55)

## 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 an AI-powered platform that helps small businesses create viral UGC videos, advertising banners, and high-performing campaigns across Meta and TikTok, making it easier for entrepreneurs to grow and scale their businesses.

### 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

Send us your CV — we'd love to get to know you!

**Live in Zeely’s hiring system.** Read from the company's own applicant tracking system, not reposted from a job board — so it's a real, open requisition rather than an ad that outlived the role.

We remove it as soon as it disappears at source.

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