Lead Backend Engineer

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.

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.

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.

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.

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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