Senior GraphQL API Software Developer in Calgary, Alberta at atVenu

Senior GraphQL API Software DeveloperReports To: Development Manager

About the job:
We’re looking for a Senior GraphQL API Developer to join our API team at atVenu. You’ll help shape how we design, scale, and evolve our public GraphQL API. Establishing the patterns, limits, and conventions that let it grow reliably as we expand across Canada, the United States, Europe, and beyond.

As a key technical contributor, you’ll collaborate closely with product managers and development teams to design, build, and maintain robust APIs ranging from inventory control to payment transaction feeds for our enterprise customers as well as our scrappier startup users. You’ll be a hands-on leader skilled in balancing trade-offs, solving complex problems, and driving cross-team solutions. Your expertise will help shape our technical direction while mentoring other developers and championing engineering excellence.

Our Tech Stack:

• Backend: Ruby, Rails, GraphQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, CouchDB
• Frontend: React Native, React, JavaScript
• Cloud Platform: AWS
• Tools: GitHub, Sidekiq, Docker

What you’ll do:

• Collaborate with Product Managers and cross-functional teams to understand business needs and translate them into pragmatic, performant technical solutions.
• Deliver high-value projects with no direct supervision; engaging senior staff members to validate new ideas, test assumptions and provide mentorship.
• Design, develop, and maintain scalable and compliant APIs that can support our platform within Canada, the United States, Europe and counting.
• Implement and enforce API security best practices, including authentication, authorization, rate limiting, data validation, pagination, and protection against common vulnerabilities (e.g., injection attacks, query-cost DoS, and data leakage).
• Design and evolve our public GraphQL schema, including a clear versioning and deprecation strategy.
• Establish query cost/complexity analysis and depth limiting to keep the API performant and safe under load.
• Improve resolver performance and eliminate N+1 queries through batching (e.g., dataloader) patterns.
• Own the API consumer developer experience: documentation, predictable conventions, and clear error contracts.
• Architect services and systems using accepted design patterns that allow for iterative, autonomous development and future scaling
• Proactively identify technical debt before it turns into a long-term problem while balancing the effort/reward of corrective action; will encourage team to do the same.
• Anticipate future use cases and make design decisions that minimize the cost of future changes.
• Provide mentorship to more junior developers.

What you’ll bring:

• Substantial experience as a software developer, with proven depth publishing and maintaining public GraphQL APIs.
• Deep API design judgment and a willingness to be a go-to voice on GraphQL patterns and best practices, helping raise the bar across the team.
• A strong security and compliance mindset, with awareness of geographic and data-protection considerations; payments or fintech experience is a plus.
• Be highly adaptable, with proven ability to learn/use various programming languages; preferably with hands on Ruby on Rails experience.
• Proven ability to trouble-shoot complex technical problems and participate in code/architecture reviews.
• Excellent team player: able to work across teams, acting as a leader when required and managing conflict independently, with the knack of leaving everyone involved feeling heard and respected.
• A genuine interest in the live event space, with curiosity, ownership, and a collaborative mindset.

Equal Opportunity Employer
atVenu is an equal opportunity employer and makes employment decisions without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, protected veteran status, age, disability, or any other protected status.

Disclaimer
The job description above is intended to set forth the general nature of the work that will be expected of the person who takes on this role. The job description is not, however, meant to be construed as an exhaustive list of all the duties and responsibilities required for this role. From time to time, all colleagues may be required to perform duties outside their normal responsibilities as needed, and the priorities within each role evolve over time based on the needs of the business.