Backend Developer (Node.js)

Location: Catania, Italy · Hybrid

Salary: From €35k gross per year, based on skills

Company

hirify.global develops digital platforms supported by backend infrastructure, APIs, data systems, CMS platforms, and production services.

What you will do

• Design, build, maintain, and document REST and/or GraphQL APIs for web and mobile applications.
• Lead backend architecture across APIs, databases, services, CMS platforms, asynchronous processes, and event-driven systems.
• Design PostgreSQL schemas and optimize queries, indexing, caching, data access, performance, and scalability.
• Build custom CMS platforms with content models, publishing, versioning, workflows, users, roles, and permissions.
• Implement authentication, authorization, payments, subscriptions, third-party integrations, and AI services through APIs.
• Run and optimize AWS infrastructure while maintaining availability, security, backups, disaster recovery, monitoring, observability, and production issue resolution.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of professional backend development experience on high-availability, high-traffic production applications.
• Strong Node.js, TypeScript, and modern backend framework experience; NestJS is preferred.
• Solid PostgreSQL experience, including schema design, complex queries, optimization, indexing, and data integrity.
• Hands-on experience designing and building custom CMS or content management systems with models, publishing, versioning, workflows, roles, and permissions.
• Experience designing multi-layer caching with Redis, CDN or edge caching, and cache invalidation.
• Experience designing and running AWS cloud infrastructure, plus Docker and orchestration or deployment platforms such as Amazon ECS, Kubernetes, or equivalent.
• Experience with concurrent systems and data consistency, including race conditions, locking, and idempotency.
• Experience integrating payments and subscription management; Stripe is preferred.
• Deep application security knowledge, including authentication, authorization, API protection, and secrets management.
• Experience with messaging, queues, asynchronous or event-driven architectures, REST API documentation, logging, monitoring, and production observability.
• Ability to work autonomously, take ownership, and make precise backend technical decisions affecting reliability, performance, and maintainability.

Nice to have

• Experience building proprietary CMS or platforms for editorial, media, or high-volume content.
• Experience integrating AI models, LLMs, and AI services through APIs.
• Experience with full-text and semantic search, including Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, or pgvector.
• Experience building video streaming and media distribution systems or microservice architectures.
• Infrastructure as Code experience with Terraform, AWS CDK, or equivalent.
• Experience with vector databases, semantic search, OCR, and document text extraction.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid work arrangement in Catania.
• Full-time position with gross salary starting from €35k annually, increasing based on skills.
• Collaboration with the CTO and participation in code reviews and backend engineering standards.