Contract FastAPI Engineer (3/6 months)

About Us

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

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.

Day rate: Negotiable

Duration: 3/6 months

About You

• You have strong experience building backend systems in Python, with a focus on APIs used by external consumers.
• 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‑mindful – 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 startup environments.
• You communicate clearly and can translate technical decisions into something others can understand.

Bonus points if you

• Have experience with API deployment patterns (Docker, uvicorn/gunicorn, health checks, etc.)
• Have worked with image processing libraries (Pillow, pyvips…)
• Have integrated AI/image models behind APIs (latency, inference, abstraction)
• Have experience with Node.js (current API is being migrated)
• Have built integrations or developer‑facing tooling

Hiring Process

• Screening call
• Technical interview
• Take‑home assignment + review
• Final interviews & team meet
• Reference check & offer

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging

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