Contract FastAPI Engineer (6 months)

About us

Founded in 2019 and part of Y Combinator's 2020 cohort, Photoroom is the leading visual solution for e-commerce.

We've raised Series B funding and reached 300+ million users worldwide, processing over 5 billion images annually and serving both small businesses and major enterprises like Amazon, DoorDash, and Decathlon through our mobile app, web platform, and API.

We're a remote-friendly team of 100+ passionate builders giving e-commerce businesses superpowers to create visuals that help them grow, making the hardest parts of selling online disappear. We focus on craft, innovation, and collaboration, creating exceptional impact for e-commerce businesses worldwide.

Python Engineer – Public API (Contract)

Day rate: Negotiable

Duration: 6 months

Location: Remote. We can hire people already based in selected countries only: France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, UK

About the Role

• You will design, build, and evolve our public API product — the core interface through which developers access Photoroom's AI capabilities.

• You will ship features used by both self-serve developers and large enterprise customers, ensuring the API remains reliable, scalable, and easy to integrate.

• You will own the API surface end-to-end: from design decisions (naming, versioning, structure) to implementation, performance, and long-term maintainability.

• You will iterate quickly based on real usage — we ship multiple times per week — using data and user feedback to prioritise what matters most.

• You will work at the intersection of backend engineering and AI, abstracting complex image models into simple, elegant developer-facing interfaces.

• You will collaborate closely with product, machine learning, backend, and sales teams to ensure the API delivers real value to users.

You will join a small, senior team with high ownership and direct product impact from day one.

About You

• You have strong experience building backend systems in Python, with a focus on APIs used by external consumers (not just internal services).

• You are comfortable with FastAPI (or similar frameworks) and have worked with async patterns, concurrency, and production debugging.

• You have owned or significantly contributed to the design of public-facing APIs — thinking about versioning, consistency, and long-term evolution.

• You care deeply about reliability, performance, and developer experience.

• You are pragmatic and product-minded — you prioritise impact and speed, and avoid over-engineering.

• You take ownership and are comfortable making decisions, while collaborating closely with cross-functional teams.

• You have worked in high-performing teams, ideally in fast-paced or start-up environments.

• You communicate clearly and can translate technical decisions into something others can understand.
  

Bonus Points

• Experience with API deployment patterns (Docker, uvicorn/gunicorn, health checks, etc.)

• Experience with image processing libraries (Pillow, pyvips…)

• Experience integrating AI/image models behind APIs (latency, inference, abstraction)

• Experience with Node.js (current API is being migrated)

• Experience building integrations or developer-facing tooling

If you think you have what it takes but don't meet every single point above, please still apply. We'd love to chat and see if you could be a great fit.

Hiring Process

1. Screening call

2. Technical interview

3. Take-home assignment + review

4. Final interviews and meet the team

5. Reference check and offer

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging

We're committed to enabling everyone to feel included and valued at work. We believe our company and culture are strongest when composed of diverse experiences and backgrounds.

That's also why we have flexible working hours, trust people to work remotely, and extended parental leave.

All qualified applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to age, color, family, gender identity, marital status, national origin, physical or mental disability, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws.