Senior Backend Engineer, Actors

Apify is the marketplace of ready-to-run tools for AI that automate work on the web. Thousands of Actors get web data, generate leads, monitor social media, track competitors, and integrate with existing apps and agents. Actors are created by a global community of builders who earn from them, while Apify manages infrastructure, billing, and distribution. Learn more at apify.com http://apify.com. 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/. We’re looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to join a small, cross-functional team of experienced hackers building and scaling some of Apify Store’s most popular Actors. You'll push these products forward with new features and new approaches, including AI, build the internal tooling that makes other engineering teams faster, and mentor junior engineers as they grow into independent web automation engineers. WHAT YOU'LL BE WORKING ON: - Building and scaling cloud programs (Actors) that crawl and extract data reliably under real-world load - Pushing some of the most popular Actors in Apify Store forward: coming up with new features, trying new approaches (including AI), and shaping where these products go next, while making sure they stay fast and reliable for the thousands of users who depend on them - Working on internal projects and tooling that make other teams at Apify faster, from shared libraries and AI-powered tools to building blocks other engineers rely on every day. AI is changing how web automation gets built, so you'll put it to work day to day and help keep improving how the team works with it. - Writing clean, elegant code, 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 - Mentoring junior engineers on the team: reviewing their code, pairing with them on complex challenges, and helping them grow into independent web automation engineers. - Owning the design of the Actors and tools you build, and making sure they fit well with the rest of the team's codebase HOW WE WORK: - Built on our own tools: We use TypeScript, and the core building blocks are libraries we develop and open source ourselves: Crawlee https://crawlee.dev/ for crawling and scraping, and the Apify SDK https://docs.apify.com/sdk/js/ for running on the platform. - Unblocking: Getting past anti-bot protection is a core part of the job, and we build our own tools for it. These include tools for browser-like HTTP requests, realistic browser fingerprints, and Apify Proxy https://docs.apify.com/platform/proxy with datacenter and residential IPs. You’ll use them, improve them, and help shape what we build next. - AI-first engineering: Most of our code starts with an agent. We use Claude Code to explore unknown websites, prototype scrapers, write tests, and review PRs, which frees our time for the hard parts: architecture, anti-bot strategy, and making things reliable at scale. You stay in charge and you own every line that ships. WHO WE'RE LOOKING FOR: Must-haves: - You're strong in JavaScript and TypeScript (Node.js) and have a solid understanding of web technologies. - You have 3+ 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 know where they help and where they don’t. You treat getting good at them as part of staying a strong engineer. - You have an appetite to keep learning, in web scraping and beyond. - You care about good design: you can weigh trade-offs and structure code so it stays maintainable as it grows. - You communicate clearly in English, in writing and in speech. Nice-to-haves: - Experience with web scraping. - A track record of contributing to non-trivial, user-facing products, open source or otherwise. - A habit of writing and sharing what you learn, through tutorials, technical support, or tooling. BY THE END OF THE FIRST MONTH, WE EXPECT YOU TO: - Understand how Actors are built, deployed, and run on the Apify platform, and ship your first small fix or improvement to an existing Actor. - Get familiar with the team's codebase, tools, and review process. - Pair with teammates on a few tasks to see how the team reverse-engineers websites and debugs tricky edge cases. - Build working relationships with the rest of the Actors team and get comfortable using AI tools the way the team uses them. BY THE END OF THE FIRST 4 MONTHS, WE EXPECT YOU TO: - Own end-to-end delivery of a mid-sized Actor feature or improvement, from design through to production. - Independently reverse-engineer a new target website and ship a working scraper for it. - Ship an improvement to the AI-powered tooling the team uses day to day. - Start pairing with and reviewing code for junior engineers on the team. FROM MONTH 4 ONWARDS, WE EXPECT YOU TO: - Own the design and roadmap of one or more Actors or tools, balancing new features against reliability and maintainability. - Be a go-to person for a specific area of the stack (e.g. anti-bot handling, a particular Actor family). - Mentor junior engineers on the team through code reviews, pairing, and growth conversations. - Proactively shape how the team uses AI in its day-to-day work, from coding to building internal AI-powered tools. WHY SHOULD YOU WORK AT APIFY? - Space, support, and autonomy for personal growth, with a direct impact on our success - Full-time position in our amazing offices in Prague (100Yards) or Brno (Titanium) 🏰 - Option to work fully remotely 🛋️ - Flexible working hours (perfect for both night owls 🦉 and early birds 🐥) - 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 Apify credits for your friends and family to try the platform 🎁 - Free Multisport card - Regular massages in the Prague office, mostly covered by Apify 💆 - We welcome pets, kids, and bikes in 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 and Brno Zoo 🐘 - Ping-pong, chess, PS5, 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.