Senior SDE (Full Stack - Backend Heavy)

About HighLevel:

HighLevel is an AI-powered business operating system that gives agencies, entrepreneurs and SMBs the infrastructure to build, automate and scale. Today, HighLevel supports SMBs across 150+ countries, fueling community-driven growth rooted in real customer outcomes.

To date, businesses operating on HighLevel have generated over $7 billion in ecosystem value, demonstrating the impact of shared infrastructure at scale. By centralizing conversations, automation and intelligence into one system, we help businesses move faster, reduce complexity and execute efficiently.

Behind the platform, HighLevel powers more than 4 billion API hits and 2.5 billion message events daily. With 250 terabytes of distributed data, 250+ microservices and over 1 million domain names supported, our architecture is built for performance, resilience and long-term scalability.

Our People:

With over 2,000 team members across 10+ countries, HighLevel operates as a global, remote-first organization built for speed and ownership. We value initiative, clarity and execution, creating space for ambitious people to build systems that support millions of businesses worldwide. Here, innovation thrives, ideas are celebrated and people come first, no matter where they call home.

Our Impact:

Every month, HighLevel enables more than 1.5 billion messages, 200 million leads and 20 million conversations for the more than 1 million businesses we support. Behind those numbers are real people building independence, expanding opportunity and creating measurable impact. We’re proud to be a part of that.

Learn more about us on our YouTube Channel or Blog Posts

About the Role

We're hiring an experienced Sr. SDE for our Industries team within Special Projects. The team turns our core platform into purpose-built solutions for specific verticals, such as healthcare, real estate, automotive, home services, fitness, and professional services.

As an Sr. SDE, you'll build backend-heavy full stack features that make our platform feel native to each industry. That includes configurable industry data models, vertical-specific workflows and automations, integrations with industry systems, and packaged templates customers can install and use on day one. You'll work with core platform, product, and domain experts so that each industry solution is scalable, intuitive, and built on reusable foundations rather than one-off code.

This role suits someone who enjoys product-oriented backend systems, has a strong full stack foundation, learns new domains quickly, and uses AI tools to work faster and better.

What You'll Do

• Leads the technical design and implementation of build backend-heavy features that power industry solutions, from vertical-specific objects and pipelines to workflows and automations

• Evaluate architectural trade-offs across APIs, data models, integrations, and event-driven systems, making sound decisions that balance experimentation speed, reliability, scalability, and long-term maintainability.

• Build scalable APIs and business logic using Node.js/NestJS, with Firestore, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, and Redis as data layers

• Use GCP tools like Cloud Tasks, Cloud Scheduler, Pub/Sub, and Cloud Functions to build reliable, event-driven infrastructure

• Build integrations with industry systems of record, such as practice management, MLS, dealer management, and POS systems, including sync, webhooks, and error recovery

• Own significant technical initiatives within the team, including contributing to a reusable "industry layer" of configurable models, templates, and automation packs that can be deployed per vertical without forking the core product.

• Own the full development lifecycle, from API design and data modeling to testing, deployment, and maintenance

• Work closely with core platform and app teams to use and shape the extension points industry solutions depend on

• Help meet industry-specific requirements such as data privacy, consent, and audit trails

• Mentor engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and technical guidance, while sharing learnings and helping raise engineering quality across the team.

What We're Looking For

• 5+ years of software engineering experience with a strong focus on backend systems and API design

• Deep expertise in Node.js/NestJS, TypeScript, and distributed systems fundamentals

• Experience with both SQL and NoSQL databases at scale

• Ability to work end-to-end across the stack, especially owning backend complexity and integrating with UI components

• Solid understanding of async workflows, queues, background jobs, webhooks, and system state transitions

• Experience integrating with third-party APIs, including auth flows, rate limits, data mapping, and sync reliability

• Familiarity with GCP services or willingness to get hands-on with them

• Openness to using AI tools (e.g., Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Claude Code) to speed up development and improve code quality

• Strong debugging and system design skills, with the ability to navigate technical ambiguity, anticipate edge cases and downstream implications, and make pragmatic architectural decisions.

• Curiosity about how different industries work, and comfort learning from non-technical domain experts

Bonus Points

• Experience building vertical SaaS or industry-specific products

• Hands-on work with industry standards or systems like HL7/FHIR, RESO/MLS feeds, or payment and POS integrations

• Experience with metadata-driven or configuration-based systems, such as custom objects, workflow engines, or templating

• Experience shipping in regulated environments (HIPAA, SOC 2, GDPR)

Why Join Us?

• You'll build the foundation that takes our platform from general-purpose to industry-specific, opening up new markets

• You'll work directly with domain experts and see your features change how businesses in each vertical operate

• You'll join a small, high-leverage team that values product thinking, pragmatic engineering, and moving fast with confidence, including using AI to build smarter