Senior Backend Engineer for Developer Platform (Node.js/TypeScript)
Apify
- Location
- Czechia, Prague
- Job Type
- full-time
- Salary
- Unknown
- Posted
- August 19, 2025
Job Description
Join Apify on our mission to revolutionize web scraping, automation technologies, and AI agents. Apify collects billions of rows of data from all over the world for science, market research, and finding lost children. We make it possible for AI chatbots to interact intelligently, and we’re making AI agents an integral part of the Apify platform.
What you’ll be working on?
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As our company and team grow, so does the load on our infrastructure. We are looking for talented Backend Engineers to help us with our core web scraping and automation infrastructure built on AWS.
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You'll work in a small cross-functional team with other experienced hackers.
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You'll be creating new features and also solving complex scalability challenges.
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Apify is built for developers by developers. We’re using the Apify platform ourselves every day, and put great pride in making it better for ourselves too. We are big advocates of open source and publish everything that we can on GitHub (PRs are welcome 😉).
Our tech stack:
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Frontend: React.js, styled-components, Storybook, Cypress
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Backend: TypeScript/Node.js, Next.js, Express.js, Docusaurus, Jest
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Infra: AWS, Kubernetes, Helm, MongoDB, Redis, DynamoDB, S3, GitHub Actions...
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Monitoring: New Relic, LogDNA, Sentry, PagerDuty
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Tools: GitHub, ZenHub, Notion, GSuite
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Process: two-week sprints, code reviews, tests, automating whatever we can, deploying multiple times per day
They say there are no perfect candidates, but you might be the one if you have:
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A strong technical background or a great professional track record ➡️ We are looking for exceptional candidates no matter the seniority
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2+ years of industry experience building backend systems and APIs
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Great skills at developing and debugging in TypeScript/Node.js, or have this skill in some other programming language and are able to learn anything quickly
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Familiarity with Linux
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Experience with AWS, other public clouds, and any technology mentioned above is a plus
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Experiment-driven and collaborative mindset
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Good communication skills in English
Why should you work at Apify?
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Space, support, and autonomy for personal growth, with a direct impact on our success
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Full-time position in Prague (Lucerna Palace) or Brno (Titanium) 🏰
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Option to work remotely 🛋️
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Flexible working hours (perfect for both night owls 🦉 and early birds 🐥)
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Nobody counts holidays as long as the work gets done 💪
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Stock options and profit sharing 💰
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We welcome pets, kids, and bikes at the office 🐕👨👧🚲
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Epic team buildings and offsites 🚢 with biking, canoeing, and other adventures 🪂
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Solid education and training budget, conference tickets, internal “Eat & Learn” sessions, and the possibility to work across teams 👩🏼💻👨🏽💻
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Generous hardware budget 💻
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Free lunches every day when you’re in the office 🌮🍱🍜🍕🥡
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Unlimited supply of ☕ & 🍺 and snacks
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Free entry to the wonderful Prague Zoo 🐘
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Free Multisport card 🏋
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Ping-pong, chess, PS5, lightsabers, foosball league after lunch.
🎯 Who is this job for?
This role is ideal for a Backend Engineer with at least 2+ years of experience in Node.js/TypeScript, strong debugging skills, and familiarity with APIs, Linux, and cloud platforms (AWS preferred). The position focuses on building and scaling core web scraping and automation infrastructure, tackling complex backend challenges, and contributing to open-source projects. It suits someone with an experiment-driven mindset, collaborative approach, and interest in developer platforms, cloud scalability, and high-performance distributed systems.
💬 Potential Interview Questions
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How would you design a scalable backend service in Node.js to handle billions of data rows for web scraping?
By using distributed task queues, stream processing, horizontal scaling on Kubernetes, and efficient storage solutions like DynamoDB or S3 for large datasets. -
What are the advantages of using TypeScript over plain JavaScript in backend systems?
TypeScript provides static typing, better tooling, and safer refactoring, which reduce runtime errors and improve maintainability in large codebases. -
How would you optimize a web scraping system to avoid rate limits and blocking by target websites?
Use proxy rotation, request throttling, randomized headers, session management, and distributed crawlers with retry logic. -
What’s your approach to handling failures in distributed backend systems?
Implement retries with exponential backoff, use circuit breakers, monitor with Sentry/New Relic, and design idempotent operations. -
How do you ensure reliability when deploying multiple times per day?
Use CI/CD pipelines with automated tests, feature flags, canary releases, and rollbacks to mitigate risks. -
What’s the role of Redis in backend systems, and when would you use it?
Redis is ideal for caching, distributed locks, and real-time pub/sub systems, improving performance and reducing DB load. -
How do you monitor and debug production issues in Node.js microservices?
Use structured logging, distributed tracing (e.g., New Relic), error monitoring with Sentry, and metrics dashboards for performance visibility. -
How would you structure APIs to support both internal developer tools and public-facing clients?
Adopt versioning, authentication layers, modular routing, and consistent error handling with well-documented endpoints. -
How do you handle large-scale storage of scraped data in AWS?
Use S3 for raw data storage, DynamoDB/MongoDB for unstructured results, and Postgres/Redshift for analytics queries. -
What’s your process for collaborating in a fast-moving dev team with frequent deployments?
Participate in code reviews, write clear PRs, maintain async documentation, use feature branches with trunk-based integration, and communicate openly in sprint rituals.
📋 Job Summary
Apify is hiring a Senior Backend Engineer (Node.js/TypeScript) to power the core of their web scraping and automation platform used globally for AI, research, and social impact. Join a cross-functional team in Czechia (remote or hybrid) to build scalable infrastructure with AWS, Kubernetes, MongoDB, and more. You’ll develop APIs, solve complex backend challenges, and contribute to open-source. Enjoy flexible hours, profit sharing, generous hardware budgets, and unique perks like free daily lunches and Prague Zoo access—all in a dev-first, fast-moving environment.