Senior Backend Engineer; NodeJS

About Whitespace

Whitespace leads in creating intelligent interfaces for enterprises, empowering them to harness the full potential of AI and human collaboration.

We are seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to join our team in building the next generation of scalable, AI-powered platforms and services. As a key member of our backend engineering team, you will design and implement high-performance APIs, microservices, and data pipelines that power our products and AI/agent integrations. You will collaborate closely with cross-functional teams — including frontend engineers, designers, data scientists, and agent development teams — to deliver robust, reliable, and secure backend systems.

• Design, build, and maintain scalable backend services and RESTful/Graph
  
  QL APIs using Node.js (Type Script preferred).
• Architect and implement microservices that support multiple products, platforms, and AI/agent-powered interfaces.
• Develop and optimise data pipelines and background processing systems for high-throughput workloads.

• Deploy, manage, and scale services on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) using Kubernetes (GKE).
• Implement CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, and container orchestration best practices.
• Monitor system health, performance, and reliability using observability tooling (logging, metrics, tracing).

• Work closely with frontend engineers, designers, data scientists, and agent development teams to deliver cohesive, end-to-end product experiences.
• Participate in code reviews, architectural discussions, and technical planning sessions.

• Implement authentication, authorisation, and data protection strategies appropriate for enterprise clients.
• Ensure services meet SLA targets through thoughtful error handling, retry logic, and graceful degradation.

• Architect solutions that support multiple products, platforms, AI/agent interfaces, and client-specific requirements simultaneously while adhering to the highest code quality standards.
• Write comprehensive tests (unit, integration, end-to-end) and maintain thorough documentation.

• Backend Development:
  Strong proficiency in Node.js and Type Script; solid understanding of event-driven architecture, async patterns, and server-side performance optimisation.
• Cloud & Containerisation:
  Hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Kubernetes; familiarity with Docker, Helm, and GKE.
• Databases:
  
  Experience with relational (Postgre
  
  SQL, Cloud SQL) and/or No
  
  SQL (Firestore, Mongo
  
  DB, Redis) databases.
• API Design:
  Proven experience designing and building RESTful and/or Graph
  
  QL APIs at scale.
• Scalability:
  Demonstrated ability to design and operate systems that handle significant traffic and data volumes.
• Agile Methodologies:
  Comfortable working within an Agile development process.

• Experience with Python for scripting, data processing, or machine-learning service integration.
• Familiarity with React or frontend technologies, enabling effective collaboration with frontend teams.
• Experience building or integrating AI/ML-powered services and agent frameworks.
• Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraform, Pulumi).
• Experience with message queues and event streaming (Pub/Sub, Kafka, Rabbit
  
  MQ).
• Knowledge of security best practices for cloud-native applications.

• Work on impactful, cutting-edge products powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning.
• Be part of an agile, close-knit team that values creativity, quality, and continuous learning.
• A flexible working environment, with typically 2 days of hybrid working in our Belfast office, and one of the best work-life balances you'll find.
• A (Mon to Thurs) 4-day work week during the holidays — July, August and December.
• The last Friday of every month off.
• Early finish every working Friday at 3pm.
• 25 days of annual leave, plus all NI bank holidays.
• EMI Share options in a rapidly growing scale-up.

• Can work effectively within a close-knit team, driving collaboration to achieve shared goals.
• Employs strong analytical and problem-solving skills to deliver solutions tailored to client needs.
• Stays up-to-date with the latest backend development trends, cloud-native standards, and best practices.