Senior Backend Engineer

First published 1 November 2025, last updated 31 October 2026

Quick answer

What does the Senior Backend Engineer role at National Digital involve?

High confidence

It is a full-time, remote senior backend role open Australia-wide, paying $115,000–$130,000 plus superannuation. The role centres on API design. You define contracts in OpenAPI, build services and integrations in Node.js and Laravel, and run them on AWS in Australian regions.

Senior Backend Engineer – API Design & Integration

Full TimeRemote (Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia)38 hrs/week

National Digital is hiring a full-time Senior Backend Engineer to design the APIs and integrations behind our clients' platforms. The role is remote and open anywhere in Australia. Most of the work is API design. You define the contract first and publish it as an OpenAPI specification, and the front end generates its typed client from that specification. You will build services in Node.js and Laravel, connect client systems such as CRM, finance and booking platforms, and run the work on AWS in Australian regions. The salary range is $115,000–$130,000 plus superannuation, depending on experience.

Salary

$115,000 – $130,000 per year

Key Responsibilities

Design APIs and integrations from the contract outward, and write the design down before the build starts
Review API designs and pull requests across client platforms, and hold the contract when a change would break a consumer
Build and operate services in Node.js and Laravel on AWS, with scheduled integrations running serverless in Australian regions
Build logging, tracing and alerting into each service so that the team finds an integration failure before a client reports it
Write the public API documentation that ships with every platform delivery
Integrate LLM services into client workflows with evaluation, guardrails and cost limits
Mentor other engineers through design review and pairing

Requirements

7+ years of professional backend engineering, including 4+ years designing APIs that other teams and third parties build against
API design decisions you can explain in detail, covering resource modelling, versioning and deprecation, pagination, idempotency, error contracts and rate limits
Contract-first delivery with OpenAPI, including generated clients and CI checks that fail when an API and its consumers disagree
Production experience in both Node.js (TypeScript) and Laravel, and the willingness to work in either
Authentication and authorisation design for multi-tenant systems, including OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, per-role and per-resource access, and tenant scoping on every query
Integration design for systems you do not control, including verified webhooks, retries, queues and reconciliation
Relational data modelling and migration on PostgreSQL or MySQL
Security practice to the OWASP API Security Top 10
Tertiary qualification in Computer Science or a related discipline, or equivalent demonstrated industry experience
Based in Australia with full, unrestricted working rights (Australian citizen or permanent resident)
Willingness to complete a National Police Check and provide professional references prior to commencement

Bonus Skills / Nice to Have

Event-driven architecture with queues or streams (SQS, EventBridge or Kafka)
Infrastructure as code with Terraform or AWS CDK
Integration experience with Xero, MYOB, HubSpot, Shopify or property management systems
API gateway and developer portal experience
Published API style guides, standards work or technical writing

Contract Details

Full-time / Remote (Australia)38 hrs/week

Benefits

Full-time remote work anywhere in Australia, with flexible hours$115,000–$130,000 plus superannuation, depending on experienceOwnership of API design across long-term client platformsHardware of your choice and a professional development budgetA small senior team in which you set the API standards

How to Apply: Send a short summary of your experience and one API you designed. Tell us what it does, which design decisions you made and one decision you would change now. A link to its documentation or specification helps if you can share it.

Email Application careers@nationaldigital.com.au