Senior Backend Engineer for Universe Team (Node.js/TypeScript)

Apify is the largest marketplace of tools for AI. 40,000+ Actors helping people and agents get real-time web data, track competitors, generate leads, or integrate their apps. Actors are built by a global creator community that now earns more than $1.2 million every month. Join us to help people put the web to work. Apify can find missing children https://blog.apify.com/fighting-child-traffickers-with-technology/, protect consumers from fake discounts across the EU https://blog.apify.com/how-web-scraping-ai-and-the-eu-have-come-together-to-sweep-away-fake-discounts-in-europe/, and feed data to AI chatbots https://blog.apify.com/intercom-customer-support-ai-chatbot-web-scraping/. To support this mission, we're looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to join the Universe team. You'll build and scale the Actors that power AI use cases across Apify - including tools like Website Content Crawler https://apify.com/apify/website-content-crawler, which turns any website into clean data for AI models, vector databases, and RAG pipelines. If you care deeply about code quality, enjoy reverse-engineering how the web works, and want to shape the technical direction of a small, ambitious team - this is for you. WHAT YOU'LL BE WORKING ON: - Building and scaling Website Content Crawler https://apify.com/apify/website-content-crawler and other core Actors that crawl any website reliably under real-world load. That means deep-crawling pages, stripping out the noise, and turning them into clean text, Markdown, and structured data that feed AI models, vector databases, and RAG pipelines - with a stack of AI tools doing the heavy lifting under the hood - Working in a small, cross-functional team alongside other experienced hackers - Contributing to Crawlee, Apify's open-source web scraping library, and stepping into product engineering when a project needs platform-level work. It won't be your day-to-day, but you'll jump in on these cross-team projects whenever they need a hand rather than handing the problem off - Writing clean, elegant code that reads like a novel, and keeping it that way through reviews and refactoring - Reverse-engineering how websites work behind the scenes, and designing APIs other developers love to use - Using AI as a real part of the job, and building it too. AI is changing how web automation gets built, so you'll both put it to work day to day (writing code faster, prototyping, solving extraction problems that were impractical before) and help build the AI-powered tools that make the rest of the team and the wider community faster. You'll get a Claude Code license to do it - Growing into ownership over time - leading initiatives, mentoring, and shaping the technical direction of the team: setting architecture, deciding how separate projects and tools connect into a coherent whole, and keeping the bigger picture sound as the codebase grows WHO WE'RE LOOKING FOR: Must-haves: - You're strong in JavaScript and TypeScript (Node.js) and understand web technologies well - You have around 2 to 4 years of professional or open-source experience on a non-trivial project built with a team - You treat code quality, readability, and frequent refactoring as part of getting the job done, not an afterthought - You already use AI tools in your work and understand why they matter. You know where they help, where they don't, and you treat getting good at them as part of staying a strong engineer - You have a problem-solving mindset and an appetite to keep learning, in web scraping and beyond - You think in systems. You can design architecture, weigh trade-offs, and see how separate projects fit together into a coherent technical product - You communicate clearly in English, in writing and in speech Nice to have: - Experience leading a team or project, formally or informally, whether by managing people or just guiding and unblocking the ones around you - A track record of contributing to a non-trivial, user-facing product - Writing and sharing what you learn through tutorials, technical support, or tooling - Open-source contributions Our tech stack - Web Automation - Development: Node.js (with TypeScript), Chrome Dev Tools https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/, Crawlee https://crawlee.dev/, Apify SDK https://sdk.apify.com/, Puppeteer https://pptr.dev/, Playwright https://playwright.dev/, jQuery https://jquery.com//Cheerio https://www.npmjs.com/package/cheerio + many other specialized libraries. We also released Python SDK https://docs.apify.com/sdk/python/ and are acquiring expertise in Python scraping tools. - Environment: Local IDE for development & testing. Then deploy to the Apify platform via GitHub for production. - Tools: GitHub, ZenHub, Notion, Google Workspace, and GitHub Copilot license. - Process: In-depth onboarding, code reviews, tests, automating whatever we can, using common sense over strict processes. Role-specific tools: Claude Code license for AI-assisted development. BY THE END OF THE FIRST 3 MONTHS, WE EXPECT YOU TO: - Understand the Universe team's codebase, architecture, and how its Actors connect to the broader Apify platform - Ship at least one meaningful improvement to a core Actor (e.g., Website Content Crawler) - Be doing code reviews independently and raising the bar in your PRs - Have a working mental model of how browser automation, anti-bot systems, and data extraction fit together at scale - Have a clear sense of where the biggest technical challenges and opportunities are for the team BY THE END OF THE FIRST 6 MONTHS, WE EXPECT YOU TO: - Own at least one major initiative end-to-end - from architecture decisions through shipping and iterating - Be a go-to person for design decisions on the team's core tools - Have contributed to Crawlee or another Apify open-source project in a meaningful way - Be helping shape the technical roadmap, not just executing it - Have built or improved AI-powered tooling that makes the team or the wider community measurably faster WHY SHOULD YOU WORK AT APIFY? - Space, support, and autonomy for personal growth, with a direct impact on our success - Full-time position in Prague at our amazing office https://youtu.be/nw1jLrdADvM located in Lucerna Palace 🏰 - Option to work remotely 🛋️ - Flexible working hours 🕰️ - Nobody counts holidays as long as the work gets done 💪 - Unlimited Claude for every Apifier. We don't count tokens. Just use them well 🤖 - Stock options and profit sharing 💰 - Free Multisport card 🏋️‍♀️ - We welcome pets, kids, and bikes at the office 🐶 - Epic team buildings and offsites 🚢 with biking, canoeing, and other adventures 🪂 - Solid education and training budget, conference tickets, internal "Eat & Learn" sessions, and the possibility to work across teams - Generous hardware budget 💻 - Free lunches every day when working from the office 🌮🥡 - Unlimited supply of ☕ & 🍺 and snacks - Free entry to the wonderful Prague Zoo 🐘 - Ping-pong, chess, PS5, lightsabers, foosball league after lunch 🏓 For more details about Apify and what it's like to work with us, see our Careers page https://apify.com/jobs.