MEAN Stack Developer

About the Role

Unico Connect is an AI-first technology partner that builds custom mobile, web, and AI products for clients across multiple geographies. We are hiring a Backend Engineer for a dedicated client engagement building an AI-powered application builder platform.

The backend is the operational core of the product: it manages user projects and sessions, coordinates long-running AI agent workloads, maintains project state, and serves as the integration layer between the frontend, the AI system, and the underlying infrastructure.

The mandatory requirement is hands-on production experience shipping Node.js services, with end-to-end ownership of API design, data modelling, and at least one production system involving background job processing or event-driven patterns.

Responsibilities

API and service development: Design and build REST APIs in Node.js with TypeScript. Cover authentication, session management, input validation, structured error handling, streaming responses (SSE, WebSockets), and rate limiting. Maintain clean API contracts that the frontend and AI system can rely on.

Database design and management: Own PostgreSQL schema design for product domains including user accounts, projects, file trees, session state, and generated artefacts. Write efficient queries, manage migrations, and optimise for read patterns that serve a real-time editor experience.

Caching strategy: Implement and maintain caching with Redis for session data, project state, and frequently read configuration. Design cache invalidation logic that keeps the editor experience consistent without stale reads.

Queue and background job management: Implement and operate background job infrastructure using BullMQ or equivalent. AI agent runs are long-running and stateful; handle retries, failure states, priority queues, and concurrency limits.

AI system integration: Build the integration layer between the backend and the AI agent system. Manage job dispatch, result handling, streaming output to the frontend, and error propagation.

Multi-tenancy and access control: Implement tenant data isolation, RBAC, and resource ownership enforcement across all API surfaces.

Observability and reliability: Instrument services with structured logging, metrics, and tracing. Write defensive code with sensible timeouts, fallback behaviour, and circuit breaking on external dependencies.

Testing and code quality: Write unit and integration tests for the services you ship. Review the work of peers and contribute to shared engineering conventions.

Requirements

• Hands-on production Node.js experience (mandatory) — must have personally shipped at least one feature area end to end in a production Node.js service, owning API design, data modelling, and testing.

• 3 to 5 years of professional backend engineering experience. Candidates with slightly less time but strong demonstrated ownership are welcome to apply.

• Strong Node.js and TypeScript. Production experience with Express, NestJS, or Fastify. Solid with async patterns, streaming, error handling, and building services that run reliably under sustained load.

• PostgreSQL depth. Schema design, query writing, indexing, and migrations on at least one production system.

• Redis and caching. Production experience using Redis for caching and session management. Understands cache invalidation trade-offs.

• Queue and background job systems. Hands-on with BullMQ, RabbitMQ, SQS, or equivalent. Experience managing retries, dead-letter queues, job priority, and concurrency control.

• AWS working knowledge. Comfortable with EC2, S3, RDS, SQS, and IAM. Familiar with Docker and basic deployment and environment management.

• Strong written and spoken English. Able to communicate clearly with engineers across disciplines and write precise technical documentation.

Nice to Have

Experience integrating with AI or LLM services (streaming responses, structured outputs, retry patterns); WebSocket or SSE implementation for real-time features; multi-tenant SaaS product experience; GraphQL; OpenTelemetry instrumentation; prior work on developer tools or editor-style products.

Location: Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Sector: Technology, Information & Media

Company Size: 500 - 1,000 Employees

Employment: Full-Time, Permanent

Experience: 10 - 14 Years (Engineering Leadership)

Level: Engineering Manager / Group EM

ABOUT THIS MANDATE :

Recruiting Bond has been exclusively retained by one of India's most prominent and well-established digital platform organisations operating at the intersection of Technology, Information, and Media to identify and place an exceptional Engineering Manager who can lead engineering teams through an enterprise-wide AI adoption and digital transformation agenda.

This is a high-impact, hands-on leadership role at the nexus of people, product, and technology. The organisation is executing one of the most ambitious AI transformation programmes in its sector and this Engineering Manager will be a core driver of that change. You will lead multiple squads, own engineering delivery end-to-end, embed AI tooling and practices into the team's DNA, and shape the engineering culture of tomorrow.

We are seeking leaders who code when it matters, who build systems and teams with equal conviction, and who view AI not as a trend but as a fundamental shift in how great software is built.

THE OPPORTUNITY AT A GLANCE :

AI-First Engineering Culture :

• Own AI adoption across your squads - from LLM tooling integration to automation-first delivery workflows. Make AI a default, not an afterthought.

Hands-On Engineering Leadership :

• Stay close to the code. Lead architecture reviews, unblock engineers, and set the technical bar - not just the management agenda.

People & Org Builder :

• Grow engineers into leaders. Build squads of 615 across functions. Drive hiring, career frameworks, and a culture of psychological safety.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES :

1. Hands-On Technical Engagement :

• Remain deeply embedded in the technical work participate in design reviews, architecture decisions, and critical code reviews
• Set and uphold the engineering quality bar : performance benchmarks, security standards, test coverage, and release quality
• Provide technical direction on backend platform strategy, API design, service decomposition, and data architecture
• Identify and resolve systemic technical debt and architectural risks across team-owned services
• Unblock engineers by diving into complex problems debugging, pair programming, and system analysis when it matters
• Own key technical decisions in collaboration with Tech Leads and Principal Engineers; balance pragmatism with long-term sustainability

2. AI Adoption, Integration & Transformation (2026 Mandate) :

• Define and execute the team's AI adoption roadmap - from developer tooling to product-facing AI features
• Champion the integration of GenAI tools (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT) across the full engineering workflow coding, testing, documentation, incident response
• Embed LLM-powered capabilities into the product : recommendation engines, intelligent search, conversational interfaces, content generation, and predictive systems
• Lead evaluation and adoption of AI-assisted SDLC practices : automated code review, AI-generated test suites, intelligent observability, and anomaly detection
• Partner with Data Science and ML Platform teams to productionise ML models with robust MLOps pipelines
• Build team literacy in prompt engineering, RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), and AI agent frameworks
• Create an experimentation culture : run structured AI pilots, measure productivity impact, and scale what works
• Stay ahead of the AI tooling landscape and advise senior leadership on strategic AI investments and engineering implications

3. People Leadership & Team Development :

• Lead, manage, and grow squads of 6 - 15 engineers across seniority levels (L2 through L6 / Junior through Staff)
• Conduct structured 1 : 1s, career growth conversations, and development planning with every direct report
• Design and execute personalised AI upskilling programmes ensure every engineer develops practical AI fluency by end of 2026
• Build and maintain a high-performance team culture : clarity of ownership, accountability, fast feedback loops, and psychological safety
• Drive performance management fairly and rigorously recognise top performers, manage underperformance constructively
• Lead technical hiring end-to-end : define job requirements, conduct bar-raising interviews, and make data-driven hire decisions
• Contribute to engineering career frameworks and level definitions in partnership with the VP / Director of Engineering

4. Engineering Delivery & Execution Excellence :

• Own end-to-end delivery for multiple product squads from planning and scoping through production release and post-launch stability
• Implement and refine agile delivery frameworks (Scrum, Kanban, Shape Up) calibrated to squad needs and product cadence
• Drive predictable delivery : maintain healthy sprint velocity, manage WIP limits, and ensure dependency resolution across teams.
• Establish and own engineering KPIs : DORA metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, MTTR, change failure rate), uptime SLOs, and velocity trends
• Lead incident management : build blameless post-mortem culture, own RCA processes, and drive systemic reliability improvements
• Balance technical debt repayment with feature velocity negotiate prioritisation transparently with Product leadership

5. Strategic Leadership & Cross-Functional Influence :

• Serve as the primary engineering partner for Product, Design, Data, and Business stakeholders translate ambiguity into executable engineering plans
• Participate in quarterly roadmap planning, capacity forecasting, and OKR definition for engineering teams
• Represent engineering in leadership forums articulate technical constraints, risks, and opportunities in business terms
• Contribute to org-wide engineering strategy : platform investments, build-vs-buy decisions, and shared infrastructure priorities
• Build relationships across geographies (Mumbai HQ + distributed teams) to maintain alignment and delivery cohesion
• Act as a culture carrier and ambassador for engineering excellence, innovation, and responsible AI use

AI TRANSFORMATION LEADERSHIP 2026 EXPECTATIONS :

In 2026, Engineering Managers at this organisation are expected to be active architects of AI transformation not passive observers. The following outlines the specific AI leadership expectations for this role :

AI Developer Productivity

• Drive measurable uplift in developer velocity through AI tooling adoption. Target : 30%+ reduction in code review cycle time and 40%+ increase in test coverage automation by Q3 2026.

LLM & GenAI Product Features

• Own delivery of GenAI-powered product capabilities : intelligent content, semantic search, personalisation, and conversational UX in production, at scale.

AI-Augmented Observability

• Implement AI-driven monitoring and anomaly detection pipelines. Reduce MTTR by leveraging predictive alerting, intelligent runbooks, and auto-remediation scripts.

Team AI Fluency :

• Build mandatory AI literacy across all engineering levels.
• Every engineer understands prompt engineering basics, AI ethics guardrails, and responsible AI deployment practices.

Responsible AI Governance :

• Partner with Security, Legal, and Data Privacy to ensure all AI deployments meet compliance standards, bias mitigation requirements, and explainability benchmarks.

TECHNOLOGY STACK & DOMAIN FAMILIARITY REQUIRED :

• Languages: Java/ Go/ Python/ Node.js /PHP /Rust (must be hands-on in at least 2)
• Cloud: AWS / GCP / Azure (multi-cloud exposure strongly preferred)
• AI & GenAI: OpenAI / Anthropic / Gemini APIs /LangChain /LlamaIndex / RAG / Vector DBs / GitHub
• Copilot: Cursor /Hugging Face
• Containers: Docker /Kubernetes /Helm /Service Mesh (Istio / Linkerd)
• Databases: PostgreSQL /MongoDB / Redis / Cassandra / Elasticsearch / Pinecone (Vector DB)
• Messaging: Apache Kafka /RabbitMQ /AWS SQS/SNS /Google Pub/Sub
• MLOps & DataOps: MLflow /Kubeflow / SageMaker / Vertex AI /Airflow /dbt
• Observability: Datadog /Prometheus /Grafana /OpenTelemetry / Jaeger /ELK Stack
• CI/CD & IaC: GitHub Actions ArgoCD / Jenkins / Terraform /Ansible /Backstage (IDP)

QUALIFICATIONS & CANDIDATE PROFILE :

Education :

• B.E. / B.Tech or M.E. / M.Tech from a Tier-I or Tier-II Institution - CS, IS, ECE, AI/ML streams strongly preferred
• Demonstrated engineering depth and leadership impact may complement institution pedigree

Experience :

• 10 to 14 years of progressive engineering experience, with at least 3 years in a formal Engineering Manager or equivalent people-leadership role
• Proven track record of managing and scaling engineering teams (615+ engineers) in a fast-growing SaaS or digital product environment
• Hands-on backend engineering background must be able to read, write, and critique production code
• Direct experience driving AI/ML feature delivery or AI tooling adoption within engineering organisations
• Exposure across start-up, mid-size, and large-scale product organisations, preferred adaptability is a core requirement
• Strong CS fundamentals: distributed systems, algorithms, system design, and software architecture
• Demonstrated career stability minimum of 2 years of average tenure per organisation.

The Ideal Engineering Manager in 2026 :

• Leads with context, not control, empowers engineers while maintaining accountability and quality
• Is fluent in both people language and technical language, switches registers naturally with engineers and executives alike
• Sees AI as a force multiplier for the team, not a threat. Actively experiments with and advocates for AI tooling
• Measures success by team outcomes, not personal output. Takes pride in what the team ships, not what they build alone
• Creates feedback loops obsessively between product and engineering, between seniors and juniors, between metrics and decisions
• Has strong opinions, loosely held, brings conviction to discussions but updates on evidence
• Invests in engineering excellence as seriously as delivery velocity knows that quality and speed are not opposites

WHY THIS ROLE STANDS APART :

AI Transformation at Scale :

• Lead one of the most significant AI adoption programmes in India's digital media sector.
• Our decisions will shape how hundreds of engineers work in 2026 and beyond.

Hands-On & Strategic Balance :

• A rare EM role that actively encourages technical depth.
• Stay close to the code while owning the people agenda - the best of both worlds.

Established Platform, Real Scale :

• 5001,000 engineers, proven product-market fit, and the org maturity to execute.
• This is not a greenfield startup gamble it is a serious company with serious ambition.

Clear Leadership Growth Path :

• A visible, direct path toward Director / VP of Engineering.
• Senior leadership is invested in growing its next generation of technology executives.

Must-haves

• Strong proficiency in NodeJS and JavaScript.

• Strong proficiency in top NodeJS frameworks like Express.JS (Simply Express), Feathers.JS, StrongLoop, Koa.JS, or Hapi.

• Good knowledge of SQL/NoSQL databases. Ability to develop services with polyglot persistence.

• Basic working knowledge of front-end technologies like HTML5 and CSS3.

• A strong presence of mind, excellent language, and communication skills.

Title: 

Node Js Developer

Ideal candidates will have 1-3 years of experience  in Node JS and AWS.

Responsibilities: 

• Translate application storyboards and use cases into functional applications
• Design, build and maintain efficient, reusable, and reliable Node JS code
• Ensure the best possible performance, quality, and responsiveness of applications
• Identify bottlenecks and bugs, and devise solutions to these problems, Help maintain code quality, organization, and automation.
• Triage and resolve complex + systemic issues reported on existing production systems
• Communicate effectively with  product owners, and development team members to facilitate understanding of deliverables, estimates, and prioritization
• Contribute to production deployments, including documentation of technical specifications and release notes
• Designs and develops quality software that conforms to department standards and code style
• Writing reusable, testable, and efficient code, create automated test cases following TDD/BDD best practices
• Maintain and enhance existing NodeJS codebase.
• Organize an agile development process that facilitates collaboration, provides transparency, empowers the project team, surfaces and resolves impediments,delivers high-quality software, focuses on delivering business value, and continuously looks to improve.
• Take on a championship role in on-time, high-quality delivery of products through the entire application lifecycle.

What will you work on?

• Architecting clever technical solutions
• Hands-on development using NodeJS and other Javascript frameworks
• Recommend technical frameworks and tech stacks
• Define REST, or GraphQL APIs, document APIs and develop the API handlers
• Design and develop with serverless and scalable systems
• Integrate with 3rd party systems
• Create architectural solution prototypes
• Lead the team, code reviews, and problem-solving

What Makes You A Great Fit?

• 1+ years of software experience with Node JS, Javascript frameworks related to webstack
• Understanding the nature of asynchronous programming and its quirks and workarounds
• Experience with use of serverless functions from AWS
• Experience with architecture of technology systems having hands-on expertise in backend and cloud systems ( AWS, GCP)
• Expertise with NoSQL databases (Mongo, ElasticSearch, Redis) including design of schemas and development for these databases
• Knowledge of DevOps practices and CI/CD pipelines
• Experience in Microservice architecture and development including REST-based APIs.
• Highly collaborative with an affinity for solving complex problems through dialogue with team members.
• Curious, always seeking the whys and hows in order to gain a deeper and more complete understanding of the business and technology.
• Comfortable with ambiguity can begin to explore and solve complex problems when the problem and solution are not well-defined.
• Ability to multitask, switching between various projects/tasks of different natures and complexity with ease
• Knowledge of git based workflows such as gitflow
• Experience with Python in addition to the core knowledge of Node JS is a plus
• Chatbot, Machine Learning, Data Science/Big Data experience will be a plus
• Excellent communication skills, verbal and written

Competencies & Behavior

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• Implement design thinking for different strategieS
• Attention to detail and the ability to work to tight deadlines
• Strong experience in cloud server infrastructure
• Ability to work on complex applications, perform product analysis, development tasks of complex web
• Jumping on a call with clients to understand the requirement and profile them the right solution, helping formulate an effective solution and turning it into a working application
• Conducting website performance and unit tests
• Heavy involvement in the requirements gathering, development and operational stages of new projects
• Troubleshoot and debug related application defects with existing and new applications
• Work collaboratively with the team members and train them as and when required.

Key Responsibilities 

Minimum Qualification 

• B Tech/BE or M.Tech/ME in Computer Science or equivalent from a reputed college.
• Experience level of 7+ years in building large scale applications.
• Strong problem solving skills, data structures and algorithms.
• Experience with distributed systems handling large amount of data.
• Excellent coding skills in Java / Python / Node / Go.
• Very good understanding of Web Technologies.
• Very good understanding of any RDBMS and/or messaging.

• Working with the product team to develop new features focused on improving the user experience
• Improving existing features and working on streamlining client implementations through improved tools
• Improving our technical architecture and building out a continuous integration pipeline
• Modernizing our front-end in new frameworks
• Everything else - our team is small and you'll likely be involved in almost every tech-related thing going on
  
  

Requirements

• 1+ years of experience building consumer-facing web apps
• You are interested in the full-stack opportunity and love building a feature from start to finish
• Self-starter with a deep interest in tech - we want someone who will come in with opinions, and shape our engineering practices and decisions for the better
• An eye for design - you'll have an important role in making the product look great
• Believe in our mission and love the idea of working in education to help students succeed
  
  

Technologies you'll work with:

• NodeJS, http://sails.js/">Sails.JS
• http://react.js/">React.js, Redux, Redux-Saga
• Kubernetes, Postgres, ElasticSearch, Redis, RabbitMQ
• Whatever else you decide - we're constantly re-evaluating our stack and tools
• Having prior experience with the technologies is a plus, but not mandatory for skilled candidates.

Benefits

• Remote Option - You can work from any location of your choice
• Reimbursement of Home Office Setup
• Competitive Salary
• Friendly atmosphere
• Flexible paid vacation policy