Backend Node.JS Developer - London - PropTech AI StartUp

Lead Backend Engineer | Node.js, TypeScript, Microservices, APIs, Event-Driven Architecture | London | Up to 130k salary + equity

This is an opportunity to join a fast-scaling AI startup building an AI operating system for property management, automating up to 80-90% of repetitive workflows across compliance, maintenance, and tenant communication. With strong early traction and growing demand, they are building toward becoming a category-defining platform in a multi-billion-pound industry.

As a Lead Backend Engineer, you'll take ownership of the backend architecture, APIs, and microservices that power an AI assistant operating in real-time production environments. You'll design and build scalable systems using Node.js and TypeScript, working across REST APIs, event-driven architecture, data pipelines, and distributed systems, ensuring performance, reliability, and scalability as the platform grows.

This is a hands-on leadership role where you'll set technical direction, mentor engineers, and contribute to engineering culture, while collaborating closely with AI engineers, data teams, and product stakeholders to translate complex workflows into robust, production-grade systems.

You'll be responsible for building and maintaining scalable backend services, APIs, and integrations, designing microservices and event-driven architectures, implementing CI/CD, observability, and monitoring, and ensuring systems are secure, reliable, and performant. You'll also play a key role in technical strategy, code quality, and engineering standards, helping shape the future of the platform.

We're looking for engineers with strong experience in Node.js and TypeScript, building and scaling backend systems and APIs, with a solid understanding of microservices, distributed systems, and data modelling (PostgreSQL). You'll have experience leading projects or teams, mentoring engineers, and operating in production environments. Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), Docker, Kubernetes, message queues (Kafka, RabbitMQ), and event-driven systems is highly desirable, along with exposure to AI/LLM integrations.

You'll bring strong system design skills, an ownership mindset, and the ability to operate in fast-moving, ambiguous startup environments where speed and quality both matter.