FastAPI Engineer - Python at Photoroom, London, 3-6 Months, £Contract Rate

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.