About the role
The Node.js Developer role consists of designing and running the TypeScript backends most modern products sit on — APIs, microservices, event-driven systems, real-time features. When the product is I/O-heavy (integrations, websockets, webhooks) and the team already lives in TypeScript, a dedicated Node senior out-executes a generalist on the layer where your latency and reliability live.
Monthly rate
$4,500–$7,000/mo
All-in: contract, benefits, equipment, IP
Experience
10+ years typical
Location
Latin America
Argentina · Colombia · Mexico · Chile
Timezone
Full US overlap
Fluent English, onboarded in one week
Core stack
AI tools, daily
Verticals seen
What they own — and what they don't
What they own
- Design and build APIs and microservices in TypeScript — REST, GraphQL, gRPC
- Own event-driven architecture: queues, pub/sub, webhook fan-out, background jobs
- Build real-time features: websockets, live updates, streaming responses
- Tune performance where Node lives or dies: async patterns, connection pooling, memory profiling
- Keep the service layer observable — logging, tracing, alerting that finds problems before users do
What they don't — and who does instead
- Frontend work beyond touching the API contract — that's a frontend or full-stack profile
- Infrastructure and deployment platforms — that's DevOps
- Data-science-adjacent Python work — different ecosystem, different hire
- Product-wide feature ownership across the stack — that's a Full-Stack Developer
Who hires this role, and for what
SaaS companies whose backend is the product. APIs, integrations, and processing pipelines in TypeScript — the layer where a Node specialist's depth compounds daily.
Teams hitting Node's sharp edges at scale. Event-loop stalls, memory leaks, connection storms. Generalists Google it; seniors have fixed it before.
Products going real-time. Chat, collaboration, live dashboards, streaming AI responses — websocket-heavy work that punishes improvisation.
- 01
API platform build-out. The service layer your product and partners integrate against — versioned, documented, fast.
- 02
Monolith-to-services migration. Carving a grown-up Express monolith into services without a feature freeze.
- 03
Real-time and streaming features. Websockets, server-sent events, live collaboration — including streaming LLM output to users.
- 04
Integration infrastructure. Webhooks, queues, and third-party API orchestration that stays reliable when vendors aren't.
Work our engineers at this role have shipped
- High-throughput REST and event-driven APIs behind a consumer product with heavy daily traffic
- Monolith-to-services migration (NestJS + Redis + PostgreSQL) done without a feature freeze
- Real-time notification and webhook infrastructure for a B2B SaaS integrating dozens of third parties
Do you actually need a Node.js Developer?
You do, if:
- Your backend is Node and your seniors on it are stretched thin
- API latency or reliability is a customer-visible problem
- Real-time features are on the roadmap and nobody's built them at scale
- You're one memory leak away from paging someone every night
You probably don't, if:
- Features span the whole stack — a Full-Stack Developer covers more ground
- The backend is Python/Java/.NET — hire in your own ecosystem
- The problem is deploys and infra, not code — that's DevOps
Not sure which role fits? Tell us the problem instead of the title — we'll tell you what we'd actually staff, even if it's not this. If it is this: discovery call today, matched profiles in 48 hours, onboarded in a week.
Hire a Senior Node.js Developer