Remote, contract to hire position with a major financial firm.
• Work closely with business partners to understand needs and transform them into testable components
• Employ industry best practices to deliver world-class solutions. Ensure developed solutions remain compliant with all applicable company standards
• Drive software development activities to meet schedules and timelines
• Thrives to ensure code quality is high with supporting unit test and automation, and timely delivery
• Research problems discovered by quality assurance or product support with a strong sense of ownership and develop solutions to address the problems
• Stay abreast of emerging technologies and how they can be applied
• Enable change, help accelerate innovation
• Demonstrating experience with taking intelligent risks and leveraging a 'test and learn' mentality
• Committed to a spirit of authentic partnership – to colleagues both internal and external to the organization
• Conduct unit testing and integration testing for functionality
• Ensure that software standards, non-functional requirements and quality targets are met
Required Experience:
- Backstage development experience
- Python, Node, Typescript experience
Backend Engineer – Backstage Development & Automation (Node.js + Python, AI‐enabled)
Core Skills & Experience (Must‐Have)
Backstage Backend Engineering
• Strong hands‐on experience building and extending Backstage backend services, including plugins and platform integrations.
Proven ability to implement "developer platform” capabilities in Backstage (e.g., scaffolding flows, integrations to enterprise systems, automation of onboarding steps).
Comfort working in a product‐like platform where the output is internal developer experience, not just an API.
Node.js + TypeScript (Primary)
• Production-grade Node.js engineering (prefer TypeScript), including:
o API design, middleware patterns, authentication/authorization integration
Observability, logging, performance tuning, and reliability practices
Experience operating within an ecosystem of plugin modules and shared libraries (ideal for Backstage plugin development patterns).
Python (Secondary but Important)
• Ability to build and maintain Python services and automation components used alongside Backstage (e.g., workflow helpers, automation scripts, integration services).
Experience with Python API frameworks and developer templates (relevant as DevX templates span Python/Node/Java).
Automation & Developer Workflow Acceleration
• Strong background building automation that reduces toil and accelerates onboarding / provisioning / template-driven workflows.
Experience with CI/CD and workflow automation concepts commonly integrated into developer portals.
Platform Integration Skills (Strongly Preferred)
IDP / Developer Portal Integrations
• Practical experience integrating Backstage with common enterprise developer systems and/or plugins (examples reflected in internal Backstage roadmap material): CI/CD, code quality, observability, ticketing, knowledge bases, calendars/forms, etc.
Capability to implement/extend scaffolder actions and platform-specific modules (e.g., internal publish actions and helper modules). Golden Paths / Template Standardization
• Experience designing standardized "golden path” workflows and consolidating fragmented templates into consistent scaffolders across languages.
Appreciation for consistency requirements like using OpenAPI-first patterns for API templates.
AI Expertise (Desired / Differentiator)
AI‐Enabled Developer Workflows
• Experience applying AI to developer workflows such as:
o Guided "golden path” execution (natural language → actions/workflows)
Intelligent template selection and parameter extraction
Automated diagnostics / recommendations based on service metadata
Comfort building AI-enabled experiences that remain vendor-flexible (avoiding tight coupling to a single model/provider), aligning with the internal direction to focus on "MCP side rather than tool-specific coupling.”
Agentic / Automation Patterns
• Experience designing systems where AI suggestions can trigger safe, auditable actions (approvals, guardrails, logging).
Familiarity with building "stitching” experiences that unify application information and return actionable guidance (internal observations call out this "agentic journey”).
Operational & Collaboration Skills (Important)
Reliability, Security, and Enterprise Constraints
• Strong engineering hygiene: unit/integration testing, API reliability, safe rollout strategies, and documentation.
Experience building within enterprise guardrails and approved-component ecosystems (helpful in regulated environments).
Platform Team Mindset
• Ability to collaborate with product owners, platform teams, and downstream app teams to drive adoption and reduce friction (Backstage is explicitly positioned to reduce fragmentation and accelerate delivery).
Optional "Output-Oriented” Deliverables (useful to include in the ask)
These are phrased as what you want them to do, not just skills:
• Build/extend Backstage backend plugins and integrations to accelerate developer onboarding and service creation workflows.
Implement automation to reduce portal fragmentation by consolidating workflows into a single developer platform experience.
Enable AI-driven developer experiences (AI-enabled workflows / golden paths) with auditable execution and provider-agnostic architecture.
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