Staff Software Development Engineer Backend Node.js

We’re building a world of health around every individual — shaping a more connected, convenient and compassionate health experience. At CVS Health®, you’ll be surrounded by passionate colleagues who care deeply, innovate with purpose, hold ourselves accountable and prioritize safety and quality in everything we do. Join us and be part of something bigger – helping to simplify health care one person, one family and one community at a time.

Position Summary

At CVS, we're building out the API Platform to enable teams across CVS Digital to quickly and easily deliver experiences into the hands of our customers, all at the scale of a Fortune 6 company! The API Platform will be leveraged by hundreds of engineers across CVS Health building sites used by millions of customers.

We are looking for a Staff Software Development Engineer Backend Node.js to lead the technical direction of an API platform that helps teams design, manage, and deploy APIs across gateway environments. This role is responsible for backend architecture, platform reliability, workflow orchestration, API design, and engineering standards across a TypeScript-based monorepo. You will work across GraphQL services, workflow systems, database-backed backend services, gateway integrations, and internal platform tooling.

The Staff Software Development Engineer Backend Node.js should be comfortable operating as a senior technical leader: setting architecture, making pragmatic tradeoffs, mentoring engineers, improving delivery quality, and driving clarity in ambiguous areas. This role is a strong fit for someone who enjoys platform engineering, internal developer products, API management, and backend systems that sit close to infrastructure and runtime concerns.

What You’ll Do

• Lead backend architecture across core services, shared platform packages, and workflow-driven backend systems

• Own the design and evolution of GraphQL APIs, service boundaries, data contracts, and typed backend integrations

• Drive development of backend services built with TypeScript, Node.js, Fastify, PostgreSQL, and workflow orchestration technologies

• Shape and improve systems that provision, configure, and integrate with API gateways and related platform infrastructure

• Define patterns for service reliability, observability, security, authentication, and operational readiness

• Guide schema design, data access strategy, migrations, and long-term maintainability of relational data models

• Improve engineering standards through code review, technical design reviews, testing strategy, and mentoring

• Partner closely with frontend engineers, product teams, and platform stakeholders to ensure backend capabilities support the full product workflow

• Identify architectural risks, reduce knowledge silos, and create scalable patterns for a growing engineering organization

• Contribute to a culture of strong ownership, high-quality delivery, and pragmatic technical leadership

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, including significant backend and platform engineering experience in production environments

• Strong expertise in TypeScript and modern Node.js backend development

• Proven experience designing and operating backend APIs at scale, especially GraphQL-based platforms

• Strong experience with backend frameworks such as Fastify, Express, NestJS, or similar, with an ability to make sound architectural tradeoffs

• Direct experience with API gateway technologies such as Kong, Apigee, or Azure API Management

• Deep experience with PostgreSQL or other relational databases, including schema design, migrations, performance tuning, and data modeling

• Hands-on experience with distributed workflows, asynchronous orchestration, or job-processing systems such as Temporal or similar platforms

• Strong understanding of authentication and authorization patterns, including OAuth, OIDC, JWTs, and service-to-service security

• Experience implementing observability practices including tracing, structured logging, metrics, and production diagnostics

• Experience working in containerized environments and modern backend delivery workflows using Docker and CI/CD pipelines

• Demonstrated ability to lead technical direction, mentor engineers, and influence architecture across teams

• Strong testing instincts, especially around integration testing, backend correctness, and reliable release practices

• Experience working effectively in a monorepo or multi-service platform environment

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building internal platforms, developer tooling, or API management products

• Experience working with OpenAPI-driven systems, specification validation, or spec-based platform workflows

• Familiarity with GraphQL code generation and strongly typed API contract workflows

• Experience with cloud-agnostic platform design and multi-environment backend integration patterns

• Experience working in large enterprise or regulated environments where reliability, auditability, and security are critical

• Familiarity with modern monorepo tooling such as pnpm workspaces, Turborepo, and repository-wide code quality tooling

• Experience partnering closely with frontend teams on product workflows that depend on backend platform capabilities

Education

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience (Highschool diploma plus 4 years relevant work experience)

Pay Range

The typical pay range for this role is:

This pay range represents the base hourly rate or base annual full-time salary for all positions in the job grade within which this position falls.  The actual base salary offer will depend on a variety of factors including experience, education, geography and other relevant factors.  This position is eligible for a CVS Health bonus, commission or short-term incentive program in addition to the base pay range listed above.  This position also includes an award target in the company’s equity award program. 
 

Our people fuel our future. Our teams reflect the customers, patients, members and communities we serve and we are committed to fostering a workplace where every colleague feels valued and that they belong.

Great benefits for great people

We take pride in offering a comprehensive and competitive mix of pay and benefits that reflects our commitment to our colleagues and their families.

Additional details about available benefits are provided during the application process and on Benefits Moments.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state and local laws.