Retrying Failed Jobs in Node.js: Choosing Queues for Idempotency and DLQs

When a media cleanup job outlives the HTTP request that started it, the operational constraint changes the answer. Short answer: use a managed queue for production retries when you want a worker that survives web-process restarts, then record an idempotency key before acknowledging each message. BullMQ is a good fast start for a Node.js team that already runs Redis; SQS is a strong default when AWS operations are already in place; a small managed queue service is attractive when you want less infrastructure to maintain. The mental model is simple. Before: a request calls cleanup, waits, and ow