Senior Backend Engineer for Universe Team (Node.js/TypeScript)Verified as a real position

Who we’re looking for

• 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

What you’ll do

• Building and scaling 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

About the position

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 , protect consumers from fake discounts across the EU , and feed data to AI chatbots . 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 , 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.

Benefits

• Space, support, and autonomy for personal growth, with a direct impact on our success
• Full-time position in Prague at our amazing office 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 🏓