Mindhub

Lead Backend Engineer (Node.js)

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Ukraine

Full-time

Hybrid

About the Role

At iForAI, we help companies put AI into real products. Our team builds and integrates AI systems: copilots, agent platforms, retrieval-backed assistants, and document and workflow automation, working side by side with customer teams.We’re hiring a Lead Backend Engineer to help drive that work. This is a hands-on role. You’ll guide a small backend team of 2 to 4 engineers, own backend architecture across services, and build the systems that put LLMs and agents into production workflows.

AI is changing how engineering teams work. The leverage today isn’t in typing code; it’s in clear specification, good judgment, and careful verification. If you have a strong backend background and you’re curious about working with AI day to day, we’ll bring you up to speed to the agentic coding by using AI.

Key Responsibilities

Lead and mentor a small backend team (2 to 4 engineers).
Own backend architecture and AI integrations: prompt and context handling, retrieval, orchestration, tool/function calling, evaluation, and observability.
Design and run reliable backend services that support real production workflows.
Use AI across the full development cycle (requirements, design, code, testing, debugging, and documentation) and help the team build the same habits. We’ll train you on this side if it’s new.
Work with PMs and customer teams to turn unclear problems into concrete, shippable work.
Take part in code review, architecture review, and technical writing.
Help keep engineering standards healthy: tests, CI/CD, releases, and learning from incidents.
Take part in hiring and team growth.

Our main requirements are:

Backend experience: 5+ years building production backend systems.
Node.js / TypeScriptwith experience in a framework like NestJS, Express, or Fastify (Next.js is a plus).
Databases: comfortable with PostgreSQL or similar relational databases, and an ORM such as Prisma, TypeORM, or Drizzle.
Caching and queues: working knowledge of Redis or a similar tool for caching and background jobs.
System design basics: API design, retries, idempotency, and reasonable latency and cost trade-offs.
Cloud and DevOps: experience with at least one of the AWS, GCP, or Azure environments, plus Docker and modern CI/CD.
Leadership: some experience leading or mentoring other developers.
Agile, distributed work: comfortable working in an Agile team across time zones.
English: B2+ professional level.
AI experience: not required. If you have a strong backend foundation and curiosity about AI, we’ll upskill you on the AI side.

Nice-to-have

If you don't have those skills, we will teach you

AI coding tools: day-to-day experience with Codex, Claude Code, or similar.
LLM APIs: hands-on with OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google APIs (function/tool calling, structured outputs, prompt design, basic evals).
RAG: vector DBs (pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant) and frameworks like LlamaIndex or LangChain.
Agents: orchestration with LangGraph, CrewAI, or similar; tool-use and multi-step planning patterns.
Workflow tools: n8n, Zapier, or Temporal.
Python: FastAPI, Flask, or Django for integrations or ML-adjacentservices.
Infrastructure: Kubernetes or infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Pulumi).
Front-end exposure: React, Vue, or Angular, enough to collaborate well with frontend teammates.
Technical writing or open-source contributions.