Lead Backend Engineer
Alertus Technologies2 days ago
Baltimore, MD, USAStaff+
Base Salary
$120k - $170k/yr
Responsibilities
- Architect and evolve the Identity-as-a-Service core services layer for onboarding, SSO, API key management, high availability, and consistency.
- Build and maintain high-scale data retrieval systems capable of accessing millions of records in milliseconds.
- Implement monitoring, alerting, performance tuning, and database optimization to meet strict reliability and low-latency targets.
- Own the development and lifecycle of the public API, ensuring usability and robustness under heavy load.
- Design caching layers, database strategies, read/write splitting, sharding, and multi-region failover for high-concurrency systems.
- Implement event-driven data flows using message brokers and change data capture or similar patterns to synchronize with external CRM systems.
- Mentor engineers and establish standards for asynchronous communication, system design, and engineering best practices.
Requirements
- Expert-level Node.js proficiency for building high-concurrency services and professional PHP experience for maintaining and migrating legacy logic.
- Deep experience designing PostgreSQL or MySQL schemas with strict ACID compliance, executing zero-downtime migrations, and optimizing complex queries.
- Experience with Redis or Memcached, cache invalidation patterns, distributed systems, read/write splitting, horizontal sharding, and multi-region failover.
- Fluency in the CAP Theorem and trade-offs between strong and eventual consistency.
- Expertise in event-driven architecture, Kafka or RabbitMQ, and change data capture or similar synchronization patterns.
- Knowledge of SSO, EntraID/Azure AD, OAuth2, OpenID Connect, and secure high-throughput API key management.
- Experience with observability focused on database contention, connection pooling, and latency bottlenecks.
- Comfort using AI tools for coding, debugging, and gathering information.
- Experience transitioning legacy PHP services to modern Node.js microservices is desired.
- Familiarity with event-driven architectures and message brokers is desired.
- Prior experience on a platform or foundations team serving internal developers is desired.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
- At least 6 years of related experience.
Benefits
- Unlimited paid time off and paid holidays.
- 401(k) retirement plan.
- Medical, dental, and vision plans.
- Short-term disability, accident, hospital, and cancer insurance.
- Live Near Your Work homebuying incentive.
- Employee referral bonuses and flexible scheduling.
- All employees must be fully vaccinated or in the progress of vaccination by their first day, subject to stated policy exceptions.
- Visa sponsorship is not provided.
Tech Stack
Categories
About Alertus Technologies
Alertus Technologies builds an integrated mass notification and emergency communications platform combining software with indoor/outdoor hardware—IP speakers, wall beacons, desktop alerts, digital signage, and giant-voice sirens—to disseminate critical messages across campuses, healthcare, government, and enterprises. Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Baltimore, MD, the privately held company generates revenue from software licensing, hardware sales, and professional services such as installation, training, and 24/7 support.