Lead Back-end Engineer

Job description

About Elockers Elockers runs the smart-locker platform that festivals, venues, and events across six countries rely on for real time payments and marketplace-style payouts — including on-sale moments where a large share of a site's lockers can sell out within a minute. We're live in six countries, with further international expansion and two acquisitions underway. Our platform is genuinely strong: microservices architecture (~30 services), event-driven data flow, and a payments stack built for a real marketplace. This isn't a role about fixing something broken — it's about taking technical ownership of a platform that already works well, and pushing it further. The Role We're looking for an exceptionally strong, hands-on Lead Engineer to take technical ownership of a platform where software, payments, and physical hardware come together. You'll match our current technical level and raise it — through your own hands-on work, and by making the people around you better. This is not a pure management role: you'll design architecture, write and review code, and solve genuinely hard problems yourself. What you'll own • Technical ownership of our microservices platform, with Node.js and modern architecture patterns at the core • Cloud-native engineering on DigitalOcean App Platform — deployment, scaling, monitoring, and production reliability • Reliability at peak: real-time payments and traffic spikes during live events, with zero tolerance for downtime • Our Adyen-based payments and marketplace systems, and how our software connects to physical locks and hardware • Spreading critical knowledge across the team so no single person is a single point of failure • Setting the bar on engineering discipline — CI/CD, documentation, AI-assisted development — as we raise an already-strong platform further • Being the clear, dependable bridge between commercial priorities and engineering delivery What you'll bring Deep, hands-on technical seniority — you independently design, build, and debug complex distributed systems Strong, current Node.js and microservices expertise — a core requirement Real soft skills and team fit — a clear communicator who makes the people around you better, not a lone operator Genuine ownership and event mentality — you step up when something business-critical is on the line Experience introducing engineering process and AI-assisted development in a fast-moving team Cloud/platform engineering experience, ideally DigitalOcean App Platform Payments or marketplace experience (Adyen, PSPs, split payments, KYC) and comfort with high-peak, mission-critical systems A track record of coaching and knowledge transfer in a small team IoT / hardware integration experience is a genuine plus — our software talks to physical lockers Nice to have: product/business sense, React Native/Expo experience, multi-country scaling with GDPR awareness, background in events or ticketing. Our stack today Microservices (~30 services), moving toward Node.js at the core. Adyen for payments. Kafka, ClickHouse, Metabase for data. React Native/Expo for mobile. DigitalOcean, Sentry, New Relic, Jira for infra and tooling. What we offer • A competitive gross annual salary, depending on experience • Real technical ownership of a platform where software, payments, and hardware genuinely come together Sound like you? The most efficient way to apply is via Apply Here or through our website.