Senior Node.js Architect (7+ Years) – Complex GraphQL Middleware & API Orchestration

We are seeking an experienced Senior Node.js Backend Developer to design, develop, and maintain scalable backend applications using Node.js, GraphQL, and a microservices architecture. The ideal candidate will have strong experience building complex GraphQL APIs, and understands distributed architectures, API gateways, caching, authentication, and production-scale deployments, implementing secure and high-performance backend services, and managing CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins with containerized deployments on Kubernetes. This is not a standard GraphQL CRUD project. The middleware will aggregate, transform, secure, and orchestrate data from numerous REST, GraphQL, and third-party APIs while maintaining high performance, scalability, and fault tolerance. Project Responsibilities Architect and implement scalable microservices using NodeJS. Develop reusable, scalable, secure, and high-performance backend services. Design GraphQL schemas, resolvers, queries, and mutations while ensuring optimal performance. Role-based and field-level authorization Request validation and rate limiting. Implement authentication(JWT, OAuth2, API Keys), authorization, and API security best practices. Response transformation and data normalization Error handling, retries, and circuit breaker patterns API versioning strategy Request batching using DataLoader WebSocket subscriptions for real-time updates Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins. Containerize applications using Docker and deploy/manage workloads on Kubernetes. Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize applications running in Kubernetes environments. Implement logging, monitoring, and observability for backend services. Streaming platforms for messaging using Kafka Performance optimization for high-throughput APIs Technical Stack Nice to have GraphQL Federation Apollo Gateway Event-driven architecture Kafka or RabbitMQ Microservices NodeJS ExpressJS AWS Lambda AWS Kubernetes Serverless Framework Screening Questions must be answered in a proposal. Describe the most complex GraphQL architecture you've designed. How do you solve the N+1 query problem? What caching strategy would you implement for GraphQL middleware? Have you built GraphQL Federation or API Gateway solutions? How would you secure a GraphQL API from malicious queries? Explain a production incident you have handled involving Node.js performance. We're looking for someone who enjoys solving challenging backend architecture problems and can take ownership of designing a production-ready GraphQL platform. If you've built scalable middleware, API gateways, or enterprise GraphQL solutions, we'd love to hear from you.