What Node.js work costs in India
Senior Node developers: ₹1,700 to ₹2,900/hour freelance, ₹80,000 to ₹3,00,000/month dedicated. Project-based: REST/GraphQL API builds ₹2,50,000 to ₹15,00,000+ per scope, per the web app bands.
The questions that filter real backend engineers
- How do you handle authentication and session storage? Look for: JWT trade-offs, refresh tokens, httpOnly cookies, session stores, not just "JWT".
- Where have you handled payments or money? Look for: idempotency, webhook verification, reconciliation. Money code has no "almost works".
- How do you structure a Node app that is not a mess? Look for: layering (routes/services/data), config management, error handling strategy.
- What is your database migration process? "We change the schema directly" is an immediate no for anything with real data.
- How do you find a memory leak or a slow endpoint? Profiling, logging, metrics, a war story.
The security checklist for any Node hire
- Input validation on every endpoint (not just client-side).
- Rate limiting and brute-force protection on auth routes.
- Secrets in environment variables, never in the repo.
- Dependency audit as a routine, not a one-time event.
- Principle of least privilege on database users and API keys.
Frontend, backend or full-stack?
For API-heavy products: a backend specialist plus a frontend specialist beats one generalist at senior rates. For smaller apps: a strong full-stack developer, see the full-stack service and the backend services page for what this desk ships.