Node.js Backend Development
Square builds Node.js backends from Tirana for teams that want one language across the whole stack. Node is our pick for I/O-heavy, high-concurrency services — APIs, real-time gateways, BFFs and event-driven workers — where the job is moving data between systems fast rather than crunching numbers. We write typed services in TypeScript, design clean REST or GraphQL contracts, and run them on Postgres, Redis and message queues. Because our engineers also write your React front-end, the API and the client speak the same types end to end. Full CET overlap, fluent English and Italian, EUR 35-55/hour.
Node.jsTypeScriptNestJSExpressFastifyPostgreSQLRedisGraphQL
What we build
- REST and GraphQL APIs with typed contracts, validation, auth and rate limiting on Express, Fastify or NestJS
- Real-time services — chat, notifications, live dashboards and presence over WebSockets
- Backends-for-frontend and API gateways that aggregate downstream services for web and mobile clients
- Event-driven workers and background jobs over queues like BullMQ, RabbitMQ or Kafka
- Integrations with payments, CRMs and third-party APIs, including webhook handling and retry logic
Why this stack
- Choose Node when the workload is I/O-bound and concurrent — many simultaneous connections, lots of network calls, little CPU-heavy computation
- One language across front-end and back-end: shared TypeScript types, shared tooling, faster onboarding and fewer context switches
- Huge npm ecosystem and first-class fit for serverless and containerised deployment
- Ideal for real-time features — its event loop handles thousands of open sockets without thread-per-request overhead
- Full CET overlap and EUR 35-55/hour senior engineers, typically 30-60% below comparable Western-European rates
Frequently asked questions
When should we pick Node over Python for the backend?
Pick Node for I/O-heavy, real-time and high-concurrency work — APIs, WebSocket services, BFFs — especially if your front-end is already JavaScript, so you share types and tooling. Pick Python when the core of the job is data processing, ML or scientific computation. We're honest about which fits and use both.Express, Fastify or NestJS?
Fastify for lean high-throughput APIs, NestJS when you want an opinionated, modular structure for a larger team and codebase, Express for small services or legacy compatibility. We default to NestJS for products that will grow and a team that values convention.How do you handle long-running or CPU-heavy tasks in Node?
We move them off the event loop — background workers on a queue (BullMQ/RabbitMQ), worker threads for CPU spikes, or a separate Python service when the task is genuinely compute-bound. The API stays responsive while work happens asynchronously.Can the same team build the front-end too?
Yes — that's the main reason to go Node. The same engineers ship your React or Next.js front-end and the API, sharing TypeScript types so a backend change surfaces as a compile error in the client instead of a runtime bug.