Backend Developer (Node.js / AWS) — iTakeControl

Red Nucleus is hiring a Backend Developer (Node.js/AWS) - iTakeControl to join our global team. This role will be fully onsite at our Pune office. There may be flexibility to transition to a hybrid work model in the future, based on business requirements.

Our purpose is advancing knowledge to improve lives. We succeed by being the premier provider of strategic learning and development, scientific advisory services, and medical communications solutions for the life sciences industry. Our global team is composed of nearly 800 full-time employees whose commitment to creativity, quality, and on-time delivery is unrivaled in our space.

At Red Nucleus, we believe in providing a rich working environment that pushes us to innovate in ways that engages our employees to be their best selves.  Our culture is about meaningful work, a true sense of community, and fun.  We love to celebrate our people and we are proud to have been Internationally recognized as a “Great Place to Work".    

How You Will Contribute

In this position, you will be working with our Clinical Research team. For more information, please visit ITC I Red Nucleus.

Job Overview 

iTakeControl is a clinical trial platform supporting live studies within a validated, GxP-compliant environment. We are bringing the platform fully in-house and building the team that will own and grow it.

We are looking for a strong Backend Developer to own and advance the platform’s server-side systems as a hands-on, code-first contributor. The backend is the most complex and most critical part of the platform — handling authentication and role-based access, clinical study data, background processing, integrations, and a substantial server-side video and media pipeline — all on live data where stability and integrity carry regulatory weight. Working under the technical direction of the Technical Lead, you will write production-quality backend code, keep the system stable and secure, and make sound decisions on a large, established codebase.

The nature of this role: this is deep server-side engineering, not light API glue. The day-to-day work is service and data-layer design, asynchronous and queue-based processing, integrations, performance and memory management, and safe schema changes against a live production database. The platform also has a significant media dimension — server-side video processing and video-call infrastructure — that this role helps own. We are looking for an engineer who reasons about data integrity, concurrency, and failure modes, not only request/response handlers.

This is the foundational engineering seat on the team and works closely with the Technical Lead from day one. It works with US-based stakeholders and requires regular overlap with US hours, particularly around releases.

 

What You’ll Own

 

• Core APIs and business logic — build and maintain the platform’s server-side services and business rules to a production-quality standard, with correct authentication and role-based authorisation on every path

• Data layer and migrations — design schema and queries against a relational database, and make changes to a live, regulated production database safely and exclusively through reviewed, reversible migrations

• Asynchronous and background processing — job queues, scheduled jobs, and worker pools for long-running and CPU-intensive work, with correct handling of concurrency, locking, retries, and idempotency

• Video and media pipeline — contribute to the server-side video and media systems: video processing and conversion, recording, and the integration that powers video calls (a core, high-value part of the platform)

• Integrations and data flows — cloud services (storage, messaging and queues), file handling and uploads, data import/export, ETL jobs, and study-configuration syncing

• Security, secrets, and compliance — handle PHI safely, manage secrets through the platform’s secret store, and preserve audit trails, electronic-record integrity, and ALCOA+ data-integrity controls

• Stability, performance, and observability — troubleshoot production issues, manage memory and performance on the running services, and use metrics and structured logging to keep the platform healthy

• Codebase fluency and collaboration — build deep understanding of the existing system during the vendor handover, keep documentation current for the areas you own, take part in code reviews, and align API contracts with the frontend and mobile developers

• You will partner closely with the Technical Lead, who owns technical direction; this role owns the hands-on delivery and quality of the backend.

 

What We’re Looking For

This is a hands-on engineering role. We are looking for proven, production backend capability across the areas below — what you can do matters more than titles held.

 

Core Engineering Skills (must-have)

 

• Node.js backend engineering — strong, current, hands-on experience building production server-side applications in Node.js, with a solid grasp of asynchronous JavaScript and how to write reliable, maintainable services at scale (we run a current Node.js version with ESM and Express)

• API design and authorisation — designing and maintaining RESTful and/or RPC-style APIs with sound authentication, role-based access control, input validation, and robust error handling

• Relational databases and ORM — strong experience with MySQL or PostgreSQL and an ORM such as Sequelize: schema design, complex queries and joins, transactions, query optimisation, and disciplined, reversible migrations on live data

• Asynchronous and background processing — practical experience with job queues (e.g. Bull or equivalent) and scheduled work, and the judgement to get concurrency right — locking, retries, idempotency, and avoiding the race conditions that surface in distributed processing

• AWS cloud services — working experience with core services such as S3, SNS, and SQS, and IAM-based access, using a current AWS SDK

• Secure coding and PHI handling — sound everyday security instincts (OWASP-aware), careful handling of sensitive data, and an understanding that secrets belong in a secret store, not in code or config

• Automated backend testing — writing unit and integration tests and shipping features together with their test coverage

• Version control and collaboration — strong Git workflows and a habit of writing reviewable, well-documented code

 

Media and Video (core to this role)

 

• Server-side media or video processing is a significant and ongoing part of this seat. Direct experience with video/media processing pipelines — for example transcoding or conversion (ffmpeg or similar), recording, streaming, or video-call infrastructure (WebRTC or a video SDK) — is a strong advantage. For an otherwise strong backend engineer, a genuine aptitude and appetite to take this on is acceptable, but this is an area the role is expected to grow into and own over time.

 

Delivery and Quality Mindset

 

• Writes production-quality backend code daily and takes ownership of it through to production

• Reasons about data integrity, concurrency, and failure modes — not just the happy path

• Plans realistically and keeps the team informed on progress, risks, and trade-offs

• Brings sound engineering judgement to a live, regulated platform, valuing well-tested, reliable changes and treating production data and schema changes with appropriate care

• Collaborates well with the frontend, mobile, QA, and product teams, and is willing to support and mentor less experienced team members

 

Preferred Qualifications

 

• Server-side video/media at depth — hands-on experience with ffmpeg-based processing, transcoding, face/image redaction, or WebRTC / video-call platform integration

• Distributed systems patterns — distributed locking, worker pools, message-driven processing, and designing for idempotency and at-least-once delivery

• Secret management operations — experience with a secrets manager such as HashiCorp Vault (rotation, policies, runtime injection)

• Dependency injection / IoC — experience with DI containers (e.g. Inversify) in a large codebase

• Performance and operations — memory and performance tuning of long-running Node.js services, worker-thread pools, and running on cloud compute with a process manager (e.g. PM2)

• Observability — metrics, structured logging, and tracing (e.g. Prometheus and equivalent tooling)

• Data pipelines / ETL — building or maintaining data import/export and integration pipelines

• Regulated or healthcare environment — experience within HIPAA, GxP, FDA 21 CFR Part 11, or equivalent frameworks, where audit trails and change control govern how changes are made

• Compliance-related functionality — experience maintaining audit logging, electronic signatures, or data-integrity (ALCOA+) controls

• Vendor takeover / legacy stabilisation — experience joining an existing system from an external vendor or stabilising a legacy platform

• AI-assisted development — practical, transparent use of AI tooling to improve delivery

Education and Experience

 

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent hands-on experience)

• 5+ years of hands-on backend development, with strong, current, production Node.js experience

• Proven track record of independently delivering production backend features end to end, including their data migrations and test coverage

• Experience maintaining a large, established backend codebase — including changes to a live production database

• Experience operating in a live, customer-facing production system where downtime or data issues have real consequences

• Experience working within regulated or validated software environments preferred

• Experience in Life Sciences, Clinical Trials, Healthcare IT, or Medical Devices a plus

*This job description captures the essential functions of this role as of July 2026. Management reserves the right to modify it as the platform and team evolve.*

What You Will Enjoy at Red Nucleus

• Competitive pay, incentives, retirement, and income security programs

• Comprehensive benefits and wellness programs focused on healthy lifestyles

• Generous paid time off, employee assistance programs and flexible work arrangements

• Performance driven environment including professional development and transfer opportunities

• People first culture fostering self expression, diversity, and a growth mindset

• Celebrations! We love to celebrate service anniversaries, holidays, diversity and inclusion events, project milestones and anything else that is meaningful to our employees

• Support of the community organizations you are passionate about

• Ongoing programs and events designed to bring our global team together

 

Diversity, equity and inclusion are valued at Red Nucleus and we believe we have a shared responsibility to provide equal opportunity and foster an inclusive spirit.  We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, caste, sexual orientation, gender, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

 

To learn more about working at Red Nucleus, please visit Careers | Red Nucleus.

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