Senior Full-Stack Software Engineer

Northwind Robotics is a philanthropic community that helps America’s boldest changemakers tackle the root causes of our country’s biggest problems, from education to the economy, broken communities, and toxic division, among dozens of other pressing issues . We provide our partners with access to resources including funding, thought leadership, a network of peers, and a playbook for applying proven principles to transform lives and society. As a Senior Full-Stack Software Engineer (Back-End Focused) on our Enterprise IT team, you will own the architecture and reliability of the backend systems powering Northwind Robotics 's high-visibility, consumer-facing web applications. In this role, you will combine hands-on development with architectural oversight across scalable, AWS-hosted applications, ensuring the reliability, performance, and long-term scalability of our digital ecosystem while mentoring engineers and partnering cross-functionally to deliver high-impact solutions. How You Will Contribute Contribute to architecture, design, and technical decision-making across the full application stack, including React and Next.js frontends, Node.js backend services, Contentful CMS integrations, and AWS cloud infrastructure. Design, build, and maintain scalable, secure, and high-performing APIs that serve as the foundation for consumer-facing applications. Oversee CMS content modeling and editorial workflow optimization within Contentful CMS. Improve CI/CD pipelines, deployment processes, monitoring, observability, and system reliability. Ensure compliance with security, governance, and cloud infrastructure best practices within AWS, including IAM least-privilege, private S3 patterns, and secrets management. Establish and enforce engineering standards, best practices, and scalable design patterns. Provide technical mentorship, supervision, and performance guidance to engineers. Partner with product, design, and business stakeholders to translate requirements into technical solutions Support sprint planning, technical estimation, roadmap development, and hiring efforts. What You Will Bring Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field. 7+ years of full-stack software engineering experience with a clear back-end focus, including demonstrated architectural responsibility. Experience mentoring software engineers. Excellent collaboration, communication, and cross-functional partnership skills. Proficiency in JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, and PHP; strong Node.js backend experience, preferably with NestJS. Experience designing and consuming APIs in distributed or microservices architectures. Experience with JWT/OIDC authentication, including Auth0 or equivalent, and passport-jwt/JWKS patterns. Proven experience with relational (SQL) and NoSQL databases — schema design, query optimization, multi-environment deployments, and operational MongoDB (replication, sharding, performance tuning) preferred. Docker and container orchestration on AWS ECS (task definitions, logging, ECR). Working knowledge of core AWS services: Amplify, API Gateway, ALB/NLB, S3, EFS, CloudWatch, X-Ray, IAM, and VPC. Experience building and maintaining automation within cloud-native environments using IaC frameworks (Terraform + Terragrunt). CI/CD experience with GitHub Actions and GitHub OIDC for secure AWS deployments. Observability and production operations experience: logs, metrics, alarms, distributed tracing, and production troubleshooting. Security best practices experience including IAM least-privilege, private S3 patterns, and secrets management. Testing and quality discipline across unit, integration, and e2e layers (Jest), with strong linting and formatting standards. Experience integrating headless CMS platforms with modern front-end frameworks. Enthusiasm to contribute to Northwind Robotics 's vision and principled approach to solving problems, and a commitment to stewarding our culture , which champions values including transformation and innovation, entrepreneurialism, humility, and respect. Standout Candidates Will Bring Experience supervising, coaching, and developing engineers, including performance feedback, goal-setting, and day-to-day work prioritization. Experience with Contentful CMS, Drupal, and WordPress in headless or hybrid configurations. Familiarity with Turborepo, pnpm, monorepo patterns, Storybook, and design systems. Zod/schema-first validation and OpenAPI generation tooling experience. Hands-on experience with CloudPosse Terraform modules and terragrunt layout patterns. Performance tuning for Node.js applications and MongoDB, including caching strategy design. Experience with EFS for stateful containers and mounting/permission management. Knowledge of Checkov, Terraform security scanning, and Terraform CI checks. What We Offer Competitive benefits : Enjoy a 6% 401(k) match with immediate vesting, flexible time off, comprehensive health and dental plans, plus wellness and mental health support