Senior/Staff Engineer - Core Workflow Engine | Remote | Europe

The AI orchestration of your wildest imagination. n8n is the open workflow orchestration platform built for the new era of AI. We give technical teams the freedom of code with the speed of no-code, so they can automate faster, smarter, and without limits. Backed by a fiercely inventive community and 500+ builder-approved integrations, we’re changing the way people bring systems together and scale ideas for impact. Since our founding in 2019, we’ve grown into a diverse team of over 220 working across Europe and the US, connected by a shared builder spirit and with our centre of gravity in Berlin.

Your main goal is to build and evolve the core platform foundations that power n8n’s workflow engine and frontend platform, so that 80+ product engineers (and the open-source community) can ship confidently across cloud and self-hosted deployments.

Responsibilities

• As part of the team, you will share ownership of core platform domains and collectively drive measurable improvements to reliability, scalability, and performance:

• Backend platform foundations (execution, orchestration, data)

• Own and evolve backend subsystems like durable workflow execution & state, orchestration patterns, queue/task distribution, and system modularization.
• Design for correctness and resilience (failure modes, idempotency, state machines) in systems that must work at scale across cloud and self-hosted.
• Improve data architecture and database scaling, including performance, reliability, and long-term maintainability.

• Own and evolve the core canvas architecture and frontend platform primitives that enable complex workflow building experiences.
• Build and improve real-time collaboration capabilities (e.g., WebSockets, CRDT-style approaches) with a focus on correctness and UX integrity at scale.
• Drive performance and rendering improvements (e.g., web workers, rendering optimization), and strengthen platform contracts (plugin system, FE DX).

• Drive technical decisions through clear proposals (e.g., RFCs), making trade-offs explicit and aligning stakeholders across teams.
• Enable feature teams by defining stable platform contracts, supporting migrations, and reducing platform friction.
• Mentor peers through reviews, pairing, and technical guidance — raising the bar for system design and maintainability.

Requirements

Must-haves

• Systems thinking mindset: You think in invariants, correctness, trade-offs, and failure modes — and you enjoy foundational platform work over pure feature velocity.
• Architectural ownership: You have led migrations, re-architected systems, or designed core components end-to-end, and can explain your decisions clearly.
• TypeScript depth: You have strong TypeScript experience and you’re comfortable working in a large, evolving codebase.
• Collaboration & enablement: You communicate well, work cross-functionally, and you’re motivated by helping other engineers ship safely through great platform contracts.
• Long-horizon engineering: You’re energized by refactors, modularization, and making existing systems scalable and maintainable — not avoiding them.

For backend-focused candidates:

• Node.js backend systems: You’ve built and operated backend systems in TypeScript/Node.js beyond CRUD.
• Distributed systems: You understand event-driven patterns, idempotency, state machines, and reliability in distributed environments.
• Data architecture at scale: You’ve worked on data intensive services at scale, including performance and operational considerations.

For frontend-focused candidates:

• Complex frontend systems: You’ve built architecture-heavy frontend products (e.g., canvas, real-time, collaborative, or similarly complex apps).
• Performance expertise: You have deep experience with rendering performance optimization and can measure and improve runtime behavior.
• Modern frontend TypeScript: You’re strong in TypeScript frontend development; Vue experience is preferred but not required.

Nice-to-haves

• Workflow/orchestration or devtools experience: You’ve worked on workflow engines, orchestration platforms, developer tools, or infrastructure-adjacent SaaS.
• Open-source experience: You’ve contributed to or maintained OSS, and you understand public API contracts and backward compatibility pressure.
• Large-scale SaaS exposure: You’ve operated systems at meaningful scale or have experience in big-tech / high-scale environments.
• Strong CS grounding: You have deep distributed systems theory knowledge (e.g., consensus concepts, formal methods, verification-minded thinking).
• Monolith → modular migrations: You’ve decomposed monoliths or led strangler-pattern evolutions without breaking teams’ ability to ship.
• Durable execution patterns: You’ve used or designed event sourcing, saga patterns, or durable execution engines.
• Collaboration tech (FE): You’ve built CRDT/multiplayer or collaborative editor experiences (Notion/Figma-class problems).
• Frontend platform patterns (FE): You’ve worked with micro-frontends, plugin systems, or web-worker orchestration.
• Multi-deployment awareness: You’ve supported products across both cloud and self-hosted deployment models.
• Observability mindset: You care about operability (instrumentation, incident response, debugging, rollout safety) — not just code.

Why join us?

At n8n, you’ll work on the foundations that everything else depends on — the execution engine and platform primitives that power a widely-used open-source automation product across cloud and self-hosted deployments. You’ll get real architectural ownership, tackle greenfield-meets-evolution problems (modularizing a monolith while building new primitives), and see your impact immediately through both product teams and the community. You’ll join a remote-first org scaling fast (Platform Engineering growing from 8 → 17+ by end of 2026), where early joiners shape technical direction, standards, and culture.

n8n is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We can sponsor visas to Germany; for any other country, you need to have existing right to work. Our company language is English. You care about diversity and inclusion? We do too!

Benefits

• Competitive compensation – We offer fair and attractive pay.
• Ownership – Our core value is to “empower others,” and we mean it—you’ll get a slice of n8n with equity.
• Work/life balance – We work hard but ensure you have time to recharge: Europe: 30 days of vacation, plus public holidays wherever you are. US: 15 vacation days, 8 sick days, plus public holidays wherever you are.
• Health & wellness – Europe: We provide benefits according to local country norms. US: Multiple low-premium, low-deductible medical plans with coverage for individuals and families—plus a no-cost premium HDHP option with a pre-seeded HSA—along with dental and vision coverage.
• Future planning – Europe: We provide pension contributions according to local country norms. US: 401(k) retirement plan with a 4% employer match.
• Financial security – Europe: We provide benefits according to local country norms. US: Company-paid short-term and long-term disability insurance, plus life insurance to support you and your loved ones.
• Career growth – We hire rising stars who grow with us! You’ll get €1K (or equivalent) per year to spend on courses, books, events, or coaching to level up your skills.
• A passionate team – We love our product, and we prove it with regular hackathons where we see who can build the coolest thing with it!
• Remote-first – Our team works remotely across Europe, with regular off‑sites for team bonding.
• Giving back – We’re big fans of open source, and you’ll get $100 per month to support projects you care about.
• AI enablement – We believe in working smarter—everyone gets an unlimited AI budget to explore and use the best tools to boost productivity and creativity.
• Transparency – We all know what everyone’s working on, how the company is doing—the whole shebang.
• An ambitious but kind culture – People love working here—our eNPS for 2024 is 94!