Service · Web development

Hire a Node.js developer with team backup.

A TypeScript-focused Node.js developer who works full-time on your project, with a fellow senior behind the scenes for code review and continuity. Not a loose freelancer you hope won't leave, but a dedicated developer within a Dutch team.

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Not a freelancer. A dedicated developer with a safety net.

When you look for a Node.js developer, the first instinct is often a freelancer found through a platform. Cheaper per hour, quickly available, sorted. Until that freelancer leaves for a better offer, skips the handover, or leaves code behind with no tests and no TypeScript. At that point your backend grinds to a halt, and the original hourly saving has already evaporated into repair work, refactoring rounds and lead time.

We supply a Node.js developer as part of our web development team: full-time on your project, but with code review by a fellow senior, a replaceable position within the team, and a contract that is legally watertight. Your code is delivered in a form that can be handed over: TypeScript end-to-end, tested, with a runbook that anyone else can follow. That is the difference between "hiring a JavaScript developer" and "adding Node.js capability to your organisation".

We work in the Netherlands, in Dutch time, with communication in Dutch or English, whichever you prefer. No offshore handovers at 7 in the morning, no language barriers in stand-ups, no half-day handovers when a production incident surfaces at four o'clock on a Friday. When the event loop blocks or a WebSocket connection drops, someone from our team is on hand, not a number in a ticket queue.

The types of projects we excel at: real-time backends, high-concurrency API layers, ETL work with BullMQ workers, headless commerce and BFF services between React or Next.js frontends and your existing microservices. For CPU-intensive workloads or heavy data science, Node.js is rarely the first choice, and we will honestly point you towards Python or another stack. But for anything I/O-heavy, event-driven or real-time, we are firmly in our comfort zone.

What our Node.js developers build.

Three main areas where Node.js performs best and where we have hands-on experience.

Direction 01

REST and GraphQL APIs, BFF layers

Production APIs built on Express, Fastify or NestJS, with TypeScript end-to-end, validation via Zod or class-validator, and a Prisma, TypeORM or Drizzle layer towards PostgreSQL or MongoDB. For frontend teams working in React or Next.js, we build the Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) that aggregates the right data, handles caching, and manages session and auth state. If you prefer a GraphQL layer, we deliver it via Apollo Server or Pothos with code-first schemas. Well suited to SaaS applications, customer portals, headless commerce backends and internal tooling that must run at production speed. We often combine this with our full-stack developers when the scope spans both frontend and backend.

ExpressFastifyNestJSApollo & PothosPrismaPostgreSQL

Direction 02

Real-time, WebSockets and event-driven services

Node.js excels at real-time work: chat and notification systems, live dashboards, collaborative editors, multiplayer flows and live tracking. We build WebSocket layers with Socket.io or native WS, using Redis pub/sub for horizontal scaling and sticky sessions where needed. For event-driven architectures we work with RabbitMQ, Kafka or NATS, depending on your existing infrastructure. Background jobs typically run on BullMQ, with Redis as the queue store and retry strategies and dead-letter handling built in. Well suited to marketplace backends, notification platforms, IoT ingest, and anything where thousands of concurrent connections need to stay open on a single service.

Socket.ioRedis pub/subBullMQRabbitMQKafkaNATS

Direction 03

Microservices, serverless and ETL

For organisations moving from a monolith towards microservices, our Node.js developer identifies the right boundaries: not one service per database table, but the service boundaries your domain actually calls for. We build in Docker containers on AWS ECS, Kubernetes or GCP Cloud Run, or in serverless setups on AWS Lambda and Cloud Functions where that suits. For ETL projects and integration layers we build BullMQ workers with retry logic, monitoring and alerting, plus clear runbooks for when a feed stalls. For projects where Node.js is deeply rooted in your architecture, we often connect with a broader custom software development project to set up observability, CI/CD and infrastructure as code together.

DockerAWS LambdaCloud RunKubernetesTerraformOpenTelemetry

What you get at the end.

More than a developer for the duration of the project: a delivered codebase that can carry on independently.

Production codebase

Node.js code in your own Git repository, in TypeScript, with tests, linting and a CI/CD pipeline.

Architecture overview

A document explaining how the services fit together and why, useful for onboarding a successor.

Operations runbook

How to run a release, how to triage an incident, where the logs live, and what each alert means.

Knowledge transfer

Live handover to your own team or successor, with video recordings and walkthrough sessions.

Option for ongoing maintenance

For when you want a dedicated hand after handover for security patches and small further development.

Three ways of working, choose what suits you.

How you engage our Node.js developer depends on what you already have in-house and how large the scope is.

Engagement model 01

Dedicated developer

Our Node.js developer works full-time on your project, integrating with your stand-ups and your product owner, while working from our team for reviews and sparring. You steer on output, and we take care of continuity. Suited to when you don't yet have Node.js capacity of your own or need to get through a peak-period project.

Engagement model 02

Team augmentation

Your own developers lead the project, and our Node.js specialist joins alongside them for the parts where your team has less experience: a NestJS migration, a real-time layer, a BullMQ pipeline, or a GraphQL schema that needs proper structure. We work in your repository, with your rituals and your tooling.

Engagement model 03

Project-based scope

You commission a defined assignment, and we deliver a working product within an agreed scope. Fixed contract, fixed deliverables, handed over to your team. Suited to BFF layers, headless commerce backends, integration projects or clearly bounded microservice builds.

Engagement model 04

Senior lead for your team

A senior Node.js developer who also thinks at the architecture level: setting code standards, mentoring juniors, approaching technical debt and putting observability in place. Often requested when an organisation wants to grow from a handful of Express routes into a structured NestJS codebase, or when an earlier freelance engagement has left code without TypeScript, tests or clear service boundaries. We bring structure without rewriting everything.

How an engagement works.

01Introduction→ 02Match→ 03Build→ 04Handover

Introduction

A short session to sharpen the scope, stack and preferred way of working. We share examples of previous work and discuss seniority level.

Developer match

We match a Node.js developer to your project based on the stack mix your scope requires: NestJS, GraphQL, real-time, or a BFF for Next.js. You meet the developer in advance yourself.

Sprints with reviews

Two-week sprints with demo and review. Every PR goes through code review by a second senior — no code reaches main without four eyes on it, and no TypeScript any slips through via a review shortcut.

Handover

At the end of the engagement, a structured handover to your own team or a successor, with a runbook, architecture decision records and walkthroughs.

Stack expertise from our Node.js team.

We work at mid-level through to senior-lead. No junior-only staffing: every engagement has at least one senior behind the code review. The stack mix you choose depends on your project; the pills below are what we build with in practice on Node.js 20 or later.

Framework & language

Node.js 20+TypeScriptExpressFastifyNestJStRPC

Data, queues & APIs

PrismaTypeORMDrizzlePostgreSQLMongoDBRedisBullMQSocket.ioGraphQL (Apollo & Pothos)

Infrastructure, auth & cloud

DockerKubernetesAWS LambdaGCP Cloud RunTerraformGitHub ActionsOAuth2 & OIDCAuth0

When Node.js wins — and when it doesn't.

Four scenarios where we choose Node.js over other languages, and two where we honestly point you towards a different stack.

Scenario 01

Real-time and WebSocket

For chat, notifications, live dashboards, multiplayer and collaborative editing, Node.js is almost always the first choice. Its event-loop model is designed for thousands of concurrent connections with low overhead per connection, a type of workload for which synchronous languages consume far more memory.

Scenario 02

JavaScript end-to-end

When your frontend is already on React, Next.js or another JS framework, a Node.js backend gives you shared types via TypeScript, shared validation schemas (Zod), and considerably less context-switching for your team. For a full-stack TypeScript stack, that is a substantial productivity difference.

Scenario 03

High concurrency with lightweight I/O

API gateways, BFF layers, proxy services and aggregation layers that make many parallel calls to external systems — this is where Node.js thrives. Async/await and non-blocking I/O are exactly what the runtime is optimised for. Combine this with our React developers and you have a coherent full stack.

Scenario 04

Serverless and event-driven

Lambdas, Cloud Functions, queue workers, webhook handlers — Node.js has short cold starts, small deployment artefacts and excellent SDK coverage for AWS and GCP. For event-driven architectures with RabbitMQ, Kafka or SQS, it is a natural fit.

When something else makes more sense

CPU-bound and data science

For heavy computation, scientific computing, statistical models or ML training, Node.js is not the right runtime. The single-threaded event loop becomes blocked under CPU-intensive work. In those cases we point you towards Python or, for specific situations, Go or Rust.

When something else makes more sense

Heavy ETL with complex transformations

For data pipelines with a lot of pandas-style transformations or that connect to a data science team, Python is usually the more practical choice. For light ETL and integration work with high I/O throughput, Node.js remains a good fit — there we would reach for BullMQ rather than Airflow.

Why an agency developer rather than a freelancer.

For a one-off small project with a short scope and limited risk, a freelancer is fine. For anything that touches production, integrates with other systems, or runs longer than a few weeks, we advise against it. The reasons are not abstract — we see them come up every month in takeover projects involving Node.js codebases.

Code review by a second senior. Every pull request with us goes through peer review. A freelancer reviews their own work, or at best someone on your team who happens to read Node.js. The difference in code quality after six months is significant, especially in a typed language where it is easy to reach for "any" and accidentally ship async bugs to production.

Replaceable within the team. When our developer is off sick for two weeks or moves to another assignment, they hand over actively to a colleague who already knows the codebase from reviews. A freelancer goes on holiday and you are left standing still, or worse, you have to get up to speed halfway through on an undocumented codebase with its own idiosyncratic folder structure.

Contractual certainty. You contract with Appfront B.V., not with an individual. That means IP rights are properly arranged, NDAs are enforceable, and there is a liable company when something goes wrong. For projects involving your customer data or business data, that is not a luxury but a minimum requirement.

Transferable code. We know the engagement will eventually end, so the code is written with that handover in mind. TypeScript end-to-end, tests, READMEs, architecture decision records. No "only Frank knows" logic hidden in a script. You can also combine this with our software development service for longer engagements where multiple disciplines come together.

Frequently asked questions.

What is the minimum lead time to deploy a Node.js developer?

For a team augmentation role we can often have someone start within a few weeks, depending on the required stack mix and seniority. For a project-based engagement with a scoping phase it takes longer, because we first produce a scope document and plan. We are honest during the introductory conversation about what is realistic.

Contract: fixed or flexible?

Both. For a dedicated developer and team augmentation we work with an hourly rate and a minimum weekly commitment, cancellable monthly. For project-based scope we agree a fixed contract based on a scope document and delivery. No long lock-ins and no mandatory minimum contract term running into years.

Do you work with a Dutch team or an EU team?

The Node.js team works from the Netherlands in the Dutch time zone. Communication can be in Dutch or English, whichever you prefer. No offshore handover, no 24-hour handover cycles, no language barriers in code review or architecture discussions.

What if the developer leaves halfway through the project?

That is precisely why we work with code review by a fellow senior. When someone leaves, the second senior is already in the codebase and can take over after a short handover. So you are not left standing still. The same applies in the event of illness or extended absence.

How is knowledge handed over at the end?

Standard part of every engagement: a runbook with operational instructions, an architecture document explaining the choices made, and walkthrough sessions with your own team or successor. Preferably in the final sprints of the engagement, not on the very last day.

How is pricing determined?

For team augmentation and dedicated developers we charge an hourly rate depending on seniority (mid-level, senior, senior-lead). For project-based scope we charge per sprint or at a fixed total budget based on a scope document. We share our rates openly during the introductory call, with no hidden tiers or penalty clauses.

Can you also do full-stack? Or only backend?

Both. Our Node.js developers often work full-stack, particularly when the backend is a BFF layer for a React or Next.js frontend. Where the scope is mainly frontend work, a full-stack or pure frontend developer is a better fit, and we are honest about that in the introductory conversation.

Is TypeScript mandatory, or can it be plain JavaScript?

For new work we write in TypeScript as standard, in strict mode, with no "any" as a shortcut. On an existing JavaScript codebase we work with it as it is, and advise on whether incremental migration is worthwhile. We don't force a rewrite where it adds no value.

GraphQL or REST: what do you recommend?

It depends on your use case. REST is perfectly good and often sufficient for classic CRUD APIs or clearly defined contracts with external parties. GraphQL pays off for rich frontend queries, multiple consumers with different data needs, or a BFF layer that aggregates data from several microservices. We'll honestly advise which approach fits, not which is trendy.

Do you also do real-time work with Socket.io or WebSockets?

Yes, that's one of the strongest use cases for Node.js and part of what we build most: live chat, notification streams, collaborative editors, live dashboards, multiplayer flows. We work with both Socket.io and native WebSockets, using Redis pub/sub for horizontal scaling.

Talk to us about your Node.js project.

A no-obligation introductory call of half an hour. We listen to your scope, ask follow-up questions where needed, and are honest about whether a Node.js developer is the right route or whether another stack would suit better. No sales pitch.

Schedule an introductory call Email fabian.vandijk@appfront.nl