Senior Backend Engineer Data Integration Platform

Location: Nicosia, Cyprus
Organization: University of Nicosia

Job Description:

We’re hiring a Senior Backend Engineer to expand a cloud-native data integration platform that powers our AI and analytics products. The work centers on ingesting external data sources, shaping them into well-defined contracts, and exposing them via scalable APIs for internal teams and partner integrations.

You’ll own the backend lifecycle from ingestion to delivery, working with modern TypeScript tooling and AWS services.

Responsibilities:

·        Design and ship ingestion pipelines for new datasets, with strong reliability and observability.

·        Implement and maintain backend services and APIs that expose curated data.

·        Model data and storage layouts for both operational and analytical workloads.

·        Instrument services with meaningful logging, metrics, and tracing; help own on-call for your area.

·        Keep automated tests, type checking, and linting in good shape.

·        Drive technical decisions in your domain and mentor other engineers via reviews and pairing.

Additionally:

·        Build and evolve ingestion pipelines

o   Integrate new third-party APIs and event streams.

o   Handle schema evolution, validation, retries, and idempotent processing.

o   Design data contracts that are predictable and easy to consume.

·        Extend backend services and APIs

o   Implement and refine APIs that expose curated datasets to internal dashboards, AI services, and external consumers.

o   Work with contract-first design patterns (OpenAPI/JSON Schema) and keep changes backward compatible.

·        Optimize storage and queries

o   Choose and tune storage across object, time-series, and relational databases.

o   Design partitioning and indexing strategies for cost-efficient analytical queries.

o   Keep an eye on performance for both batch and on-demand workloads.

·        Raise the bar on reliability, security, and cost

o   Improve observability (logs, metrics, traces) across ingestion workflows.

o   Harden auth, access patterns, and data isolation.

o   Implement cost controls and operational runbooks for day-to-day operations and on-call.

·        Collaborate across product, data, and infra

o   Work with product and data teams to prioritize integrations and unblock analyses.

o   Coordinate with infra/DevOps on CI/CD, environments, and deployments.

o   Document decisions, interfaces, and runbooks clearly.

Qualifications:

Education:

·        A BSc in Computer Science, or Computer Engineering or related field.

Experience:

·        5+ years of backend engineering experience, including:

o   Production experience with Node.js or a similar runtime.

o   Strong TypeScript/JavaScript skills and comfort with static typing.

Required Skills:

·        Proven experience building:

o   Data ingestion from third-party APIs, webhooks, or streams.

o   Idempotent, retry-safe workflows that handle failures gracefully.

·        Cloud fluency:

o   Building serverless or containerized services on AWS or a similar platform.

o   Working with at least some of: Lambda, API Gateway, S3, event buses, Glue/ETL tools.

·        Hands-on with multiple datastores:

o   Time-series or analytical engines plus at least one relational database.

·        Observability and operations:

o   Instrumentation, logging, metrics, tracing, and participating in on-call for your services.

·        Good engineering hygiene:

o   Automated testing, CI/CD, code review, and documentation habits.

·        Strong written and spoken English and the ability to communicate clearly with non-engineers.

Additional Skills:

·        Experience with geospatial data, vector/raster tiles, or mapping SDKs.

·        Background in environmental, climate, or public/open data domains.

·        Familiarity with data lake formats (Parquet/manifest), partitioning, and cost-aware storage design.

·        Experience working closely with data scientists/analysts on shared pipelines.

What success looks like in this role

·        Within a few weeks, you’re independently shipping features in one product area.

·        Within a few months, you own a domain in the frontend (e.g. a module or shared component set) and are trusted to make architectural decisions there.

·        Other engineers see your code as a reference for how things “should” be done in this codebase.

Application Procedure:

Interested candidates should submit the following documents through:

• Cover Letter outlining interest and relevant qualifications.
• Curriculum Vitae (CV).
• Portfolio or link to work samples.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

Candidates should be eligible to work in the European Union/European Economic Area.

About the University of Nicosia (www.unic.ac.cy):

The University of Nicosia (UNIC) is a research-oriented university dedicated to teaching, research, innovation, sustainability, societal engagement, and cultural contribution. With over 100 programmes at the Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctoral levels, offered both on-campus and online, UNIC serves more than 11,500 students from over 100 countries.

UNIC boasts an outstanding academic reputation and a global perspective, as evidenced by its impressive international rankings. Indicatively, in the 2026 edition of the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings, UNIC has held its rank among the top 501-600 universities globally for the fourth consecutive year.

The University strives to cultivate an academically stimulating environment that is student-centred and promotes active self-learning, imparting lifelong learning skills and competences to its students through smaller than average class sizes, a wide range of laboratories and innovative teaching methods.