Lead Backend Engineer
About Us
At HSP Group, we're pioneering a new niche within the fast-growing industry of global expansion management. As a Stage B startup, we focus on delivering value through relentless innovation, execution, and customer delight. As part of a small but highly experienced and dynamic team, you will play a critical role in our company's success.
About Gateway HR
Gateway HR is our HRIS platform designed specifically for global expansion management. It offers deep integration with Gateway GXM — our flagship global entity management platform — enabling capabilities like automatic payslip generation, intelligent contract management, and seamless cross-border compliance.
Our platform ecosystem already includes AI-powered document recognition and classification in production, event-driven serverless architecture on Azure, and a growing suite of integrated tools spanning HR, entity management, and compliance.
Job Description
This is a remote role
We're looking for a Lead Backend Engineer to own the technical direction of Gateway HR and drive its deep integration with GXM. You'll combine hands-on platform development with technical leadership of external development teams — evolving the architecture, building innovative features, and representing HSP's engineering standards across the codebase.
This is not a pure management role. You'll be writing code, reviewing PRs, challenging architectural decisions, and shipping features — while also setting the bar for quality and engineering practices.
The Team
You'll join a small, distributed engineering organization. Day-to-day, you'll work closely with the GXM backend team, an external development partner, and the product team. You report to the Director of Engineering.
In your first 90 days, expect to: get hands-on with both the Gateway HR and GXM codebases, establish your code review cadence with the external team, ship your first meaningful feature and start shaping the integration roadmap.
Responsibilities:
Architecture & Development
- Evolve the Gateway HR architecture for scale, reliability, and deeper integration with GXM
- Design and build backend systems for automated payroll processing, compliance monitoring, and intelligent document handling
- Extend AI capabilities already in production (document recognition, classification) to new HR workflows
- Design APIs and event-driven workflows using Azure Service Bus for complex, multi-tenant operations
- Work across both MongoDB and PostgreSQL — our ecosystem uses both, and you'll need fluency in each
Engineering Excellence & External Team Management
- Lead and manage external development teams — enforce standards, challenge estimates, catch quality gaps
- Conduct rigorous code reviews and establish testing strategies (unit, integration, end-to-end)
- Build CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions for rapid, safe deployment
- Implement observability and monitoring for distributed HR workflows
- Champion code quality through documentation, mentoring, and leading by example
Leadership & Collaboration
- Mentor backend and full-stack developers — both internal and external
- Represent HSP's engineering interests when working with external development partners
- Collaborate with the GXM team on shared infrastructure, integration patterns, and architectural decisions
- Work with product to translate HRIS vision into technical reality
- Implement feature flag strategies for safe rollout of new capabilities
Qualifications:
Required
- 7+ years backend development, 3+ years in technical leadership
- Experience in a regulated or compliance-heavy industry — finance, healthcare, HR/payroll, or large-scale e-commerce — where data security, audit trails, and regulatory requirements are non-negotiable
- TypeScript/Node.js — maintainable, production-ready code
- Azure serverless — Functions, Service Bus, API Management
- PostgreSQL with ORM experience (Sequelize or similar)
- MongoDB with advanced data modeling
- Experience managing external development teams — code reviews, quality enforcement, architectural guidance
- Event-driven architecture and distributed systems design
- Terraform for infrastructure as code
- GitHub Actions for CI/CD
- Track record of establishing engineering practices and raising quality standards
Preferred:
- Background in HR technology, payroll platforms, or global workforce management —understanding multi-country employment, compliance, and employee lifecycle challenges
- Cerbos or similar policy-based authorization engines
- WorkOS or similar identity/authentication platforms
- Novu or similar notification infrastructure
- Python for AI/ML integration, data analytics, or workflow scripting
- Terragrunt for advanced IaC patterns
- System migration and refactoring experience — evolving legacy systems while maintaining uptime
- Multi-tenant SaaS architecture and global scalability patterns
Why Join Us?
- Own the technical direction of a platform deeply integrated with our flagship GXM product
- Lead both internal and external teams — a true engineering leadership role, not just coding
- Real AI in production — not buzzwords, but working document recognition and classification you'll extend
- Direct impact on product direction, architecture, and engineering culture
- Modern stack — Azure serverless, TypeScript, event-driven, infrastructure as code
- Remote-first culture with a small, experienced team where your leadership directly shapes the product
- Unique market position — deep integration between HR and global expansion management
If you’re a driven individual who wants to make your mark in the heart of the innovation economy, we’d love to meet you. Join our #HSPGlobalSolutionTeam and help us power the next wave of global growth.
Create a Job Alert
Interested in building your career at HSP Group? Get future opportunities sent straight to your email.
Apply for this job
*
indicates a required field