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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Lead Back End Developer

💰 $100,000 - $160,000

TechnologySoftware DevelopmentBackend EngineeringLeadership

🎯 Role Definition

The Lead Back End Developer is a senior technical leader responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining the server-side architecture of applications. This role involves leading a team of backend engineers, defining best practices, ensuring high performance and scalability, and collaborating with cross-functional teams to deliver reliable, secure, and efficient backend systems. The ideal candidate combines deep technical expertise with strong leadership, problem-solving skills, and a strategic mindset to drive the backend engineering roadmap and contribute to business growth.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Back End Developer
  • Principal Software Engineer (Backend)
  • Technical Architect (Backend Systems)

Advancement To:

  • Engineering Manager – Backend
  • Head of Backend Engineering / Head of Platform
  • Director of Software Engineering (Backend Infrastructure)

Lateral Moves:

  • Lead Full‑Stack Developer
  • Backend Architect / Solutions Architect
  • DevOps / Platform Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  1. Lead, mentor and grow a team of back‑end engineers, guiding code reviews, coaching best practices and fostering a high‑performance culture.
  2. Architect, design and implement robust, scalable backend services and microservice ecosystems to meet current and future business needs.
  3. Define and oversee the RESTful and/or event‑driven API strategy, ensuring secure, high‑throughput integrations.
  4. Collaborate with product managers, frontend teams, DevOps and QA to translate business requirements into technical specifications and deliverables.
  5. Own the full software development lifecycle for key backend components: requirement gathering, design, development, testing, deployment and maintenance.
  6. Establish and drive standards for code quality, automated testing (unit, integration), CI/CD pipelines, and maintainability of services.
  7. Analyse and optimise backend performance metrics including response time, throughput, database efficiency, caching and queuing strategies.
  8. Oversee database architecture and design (relational and NoSQL) including schema design, indexing, query optimisation and data modelling.
  9. Ensure robust security, authentication/authorization (e.g., OAuth2/JWT), data protection, encryption and compliance with organisational policies.
  10. Drive process improvements in backend engineering including containerisation (Docker/Kubernetes), microservices orchestration, monitoring/logging (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana) and cloud infrastructure (AWS/Azure/GCP).
  11. Participate in architectural reviews, technology evaluations and research of new tools and frameworks that can improve team productivity or system capability.
  12. Decompose monolithic systems into microservices (where relevant), define orchestration/choreography patterns (e.g., SAGA), and lead the migration efforts.
  13. Troubleshoot and resolve complex production issues, act as escalation point, perform root‑cause analysis and implement preventative solutions.
  14. Create and maintain comprehensive technical documentation, including service interfaces, design decisions, deployment procedures and operational runbooks.
  15. Estimate task sizes, participate in sprint planning and Agile ceremonies (scrums, retrospectives), and ensure timely delivery of milestones.
  16. Balance feature development with technical debt management, guiding the team to refactor code and improve legacy systems as business evolves.
  17. Monitor system health, SLAs, availability and ensure high uptime and resilience of back‑end services serving internal and external clients.
  18. Partner with DevOps and security teams to evolve and automate deployment, orchestration, container infrastructure, logging and alerting.
  19. Act as primary liaison between engineering and business stakeholders — reporting progress, risk, and architecture implications in clear language.
  20. Foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement within the backend engineering team; stay abreast of industry trends, coding practices and performance optimisation techniques.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad‑hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organisation's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Expertise in one or more backend programming languages (e.g., Java with Spring Boot, C#, .NET Core, Node.js with TypeScript).
  • Strong experience designing and implementing RESTful APIs and/or event‑driven microservices architectures.
  • Proven ability with relational (e.g., PostgreSQL, SQL Server) and/or NoSQL (e.g., MongoDB) databases, including data modelling and performance tuning.
  • Experience with containerisation (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes) and cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure or GCP).
  • Solid knowledge of automated testing frameworks (unit, integration), CI/CD pipelines and code review workflows.
  • Hands‑on with performance tuning, caching strategies, message queues (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ) and distributed systems.
  • Understanding of security best practices, authentication/authorization (OAuth2/JWT), encryption and compliance.
  • Track record in decomposing monolithic applications into microservices, applying Domain‑Driven Design, orchestration/choreography.
  • Excellent documentation skills: architecture blueprints, service interfaces, deployment guides, runbooks.
  • Skilled in Agile methodologies (Scrum/Kanban), sprint planning and estimation of engineering tasks.

Soft Skills

  • Leadership and team‑mentoring: ability to guide, motivate and develop backend engineers.
  • Strategic mindset: balancing short‑term deliverables with long‑term architectural vision.
  • Excellent communication: translating technical concepts into business‑ stakeholder language; managing cross‑functional collaboration.
  • Problem‑solving and analytical thinking: drive root‑cause analysis, troubleshoot complex systems and propose preventative action.
  • Adaptability and continuous learning: stay current with evolving technology, frameworks and best practices.
  • Ownership and accountability: take responsibility for backend service quality, scalability, performance and uptime.
  • Collaboration and teamwork: work closely with product, frontend, QA and DevOps functions.
  • Time‑management and prioritisation: manage competing demands, delegate effectively until the team delivers.
  • Customer‑focus: understanding end‑user needs, data owners and business impact.
  • Quality focus: drive engineering excellence, code reviews, testing, proper design — not just shipping features.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or a related discipline (or equivalent professional experience).
Preferred Education:
Master’s degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering is a plus.
Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Information Systems

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:
7 ‑ 12 years of total software engineering experience with at least 3‑5 years in a lead or senior backend role.
Preferred:
Proven experience leading a backend team, building scalable microservices, driving architecture and delivering high‑throughput systems at scale (e.g., financial services, SaaS, high‑traffic platforms).

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