Staff Node.js Software Engineer

Must-have Skills

• Staff or Lead-level software engineering experience, with the ability to operate independently, make sound architectural decisions, and lead technical direction without constant oversight.
• Strong hands-on experience working with legacy PHP, including environments such as Symfony and native PHP, with the ability to navigate, debug, stabilize, and safely refactor complex monolithic applications.
• Strong full-stack engineering background with practical knowledge of modern frontend and backend development.
• Functional proficiency with Next.js, Node.js, Symfony, and modern API architectures.
• Experience designing, consuming, or evolving APIs using technologies and patterns such as GraphQL, REST, and API Gateways.
• Demonstrated experience modernizing or migrating legacy systems while maintaining business continuity and minimizing unnecessary complexity.
• Ability to understand and extract complex or undocumented business logic and translate it into modular, maintainable technical solutions.
• Strong architectural judgment, including the ability to evaluate trade-offs, define system boundaries, and recommend pragmatic migration strategies.
• AI-Assisted Engineering Fluency: Active, hands-on proficiency with AI-assisted development tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, and GitHub Copilot. AI tools should be an integral part of your daily development workflow for coding, debugging, refactoring, research, and technical problem-solving.
• Strong problem-solving and debugging skills, particularly within complex, business-critical systems.
• Ability to balance architectural thinking with daily hands-on execution and code contribution.
• Strong communication and stakeholder-management skills, including the ability to explain technical decisions, risks, and trade-offs clearly to senior stakeholders.
• Pragmatic and collaborative working style, with a willingness to work directly alongside engineers rather than operating exclusively at an architectural or strategic level.

• Experience working with financial, royalty, accounting, or payment-related systems, particularly workflows involving contracts, rights, commissions, payments, or multi-currency transactions.
• Familiarity with Python or.NET, particularly within broader multi-stack enterprise environments.
• Experience modernizing large-scale legacy applications through incremental migration or decoupling strategies.
• Experience designing or implementing microservices, Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) patterns, or API-driven architectures.
• Experience working within complex enterprise environments involving multiple technology stacks and interconnected systems.
• Experience mentoring engineers, establishing development practices, and helping growing engineering teams scale effectively.
• Experience partnering directly with senior technical and business stakeholders on high-visibility transformation initiatives.
• Familiarity with talent, entertainment, agency management, rights management, or similar domain-specific platforms.

Sounds awesome, right? Now, let's make sure you're a good fit for the role:

Key Responsibilities

• Provide architectural guidance on the transition of business-critical functionality from legacy PHP systems to a modern, scalable technology stack.
• Evaluate technical trade-offs, define clear API boundaries, and establish pragmatic migration strategies that balance modernization with business continuity.
• Remain deeply hands-on with code, contributing directly to development while providing Staff-level technical leadership and architectural direction.
• Resolve critical bugs, improve system reliability, and safely refactor business-critical workflows within complex legacy environments.
• Deep-dive into undocumented business logic, including contracts, commissions, rights, and payments, and translate it into modular, maintainable modern architecture.
• Drive the incremental decoupling of legacy systems using modern backend and frontend patterns, including APIs, microservices/BFF architectures, Next.js, and Node.js.
• Design and guide modern API strategies using technologies and patterns such as GraphQL, REST, and API Gateways.
• Leverage AI-assisted development tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot as an integral part of daily engineering workflows to accelerate development, debugging, refactoring, and technical analysis.
• Identify opportunities to use AI to increase engineering velocity, improve developer workflows, and reduce repetitive development effort.
• Partner closely with engineers, technical leaders, and senior business stakeholders to clarify requirements, challenge assumptions, and make sound architectural decisions.
• Act as a trusted technical advisor, communicating migration pathways, architectural trade-offs, risks, and recommendations clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Help establish engineering standards and modern development practices while working collaboratively and hands-on alongside the broader engineering team.
• Support the onboarding and mentoring of additional engineers as the workstream and team continue to grow.

• Business and marketing objectives are consistently translated into clear, actionable campaign briefs.
• Creative and content partners receive the context, decisions, and feedback needed to deliver strong work.
• Campaigns progress with clear ownership, fewer missed follow-ups, and fewer avoidable delays.
• Content and creative work are constructively challenged when they do not align with the brief, audience need, or intended campaign outcome.
• Marketing leadership can focus on strategy and final approvals rather than day-to-day task management.
• Campaign insights and learnings are captured and applied to improve future briefs, workflows, and ways of working.
• The Coordinator develops increasing fluency in ETF products, financial-advisor audiences, category narratives, and campaign performance.
• Legacy business logic is progressively understood, documented, stabilized, and transitioned toward a modern architecture without disrupting critical business operations.
• Clear and pragmatic migration pathways are established between legacy PHP applications and the target technology stack.
• Critical bugs and reliability issues are resolved quickly, while high-risk areas of the legacy application are safely refactored.
• API boundaries and integration patterns are clearly defined, enabling incremental decoupling rather than unnecessary large-scale rewrites.
• Engineering decisions appropriately balance speed, maintainability, technical risk, and business priorities.
• AI-assisted development becomes an integral part of daily engineering workflows, contributing to faster coding, debugging, refactoring, and technical analysis.
• Senior stakeholders have clear visibility into architectural trade-offs, migration risks, dependencies, and recommended next steps.
• The Staff Engineer remains an active technical contributor while providing the architectural guidance and technical leadership expected at Staff level.
• Engineering practices, documentation, and knowledge transfer improve as the workstream grows and additional team members are onboarded.