Full Stack Engineer - Shadow

Darkroom is the leading next-generation growth marketing firm engineering the brands of tomorrow. Founded in 2017, we set out to redefine what a modern agency could be, by replacing the inertia of legacy advertising behemoths with a model built for speed, intelligence, and measurable impact.

At our core, Darkroom is a human services company powered by Shadow, a universal AI commerce layer that integrates executive-level strategy with proprietary agentic technology. This fusion enables our teams to deliver outsized returns by enhancing creative output, operational efficiency, and revenue generation across every stage of the customer journey.

Our track record speaks for itself: billions in attributable revenue driven across e-commerce marketplaces, media networks, DTC ecosystems, and social commerce platforms. Every engagement feeds into our proprietary data infrastructure, enabling a continuous feedback loop that accelerates growth, improves margins, and compounds results across our client portfolio.

What began as a boutique design studio has evolved into one of the fastest-growing private companies in America (Inc. 5000) and among the most effective performance media agencies of the 2020s (Varos). Our founders were recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30 for advancing the intersection of technology, marketing, and advertising, cementing Darkroom’s role as a defining player in the future of media innovation.

We help consumer brands shift from workflow automation to agent management. Shadow is the AI coordination layer for marketing teams — providing shared memory, centralized control, and model orchestration across their stack.

We are building this company on a decade of hands-on experience serving 300+ consumer brands. Now we're designing the interfaces that define how marketers work with AI.

We're looking for a Full-Stack Engineer to own the systems that make our AI agents actually work — orchestration, execution, and the APIs that tie everything together. This is equal parts architectural rigor and product intuition. You'll build the backbone of a platform where marketers configure agents, trigger complex workflows, and trust the system to run reliably at scale.

You'll report directly to the CEO and work alongside a small team of engineers and designers who ship daily, operate with high autonomy, and aren't afraid to rebuild what isn't working.

• Own full-stack features end-to-end — from database models and APIs to frontend integration and UX correctness.

• Design and extend backend systems that power complex agent orchestration — subagents, skills, knowledge base retrieval, parallel execution, and long-running workflows.

• Build and evolve REST APIs that are stable, well-typed, and easy for the frontend and agents to consume.

• Integrate and debug LLM-powered workflows — prompts, tools, retrieval, evaluation loops — with a strong focus on reliability and observability.

• Ensure frontend and backend systems interoperate cleanly: tight contracts, predictable data flow, and minimal friction.

• Improve performance, resilience, and security across the stack as usage and complexity grow.

• Use coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.) as force multipliers to move faster and push quality higher.

• Collaborate closely with product and design to turn ambiguous ideas into shipped, production-grade features.

• Raise the technical bar through thoughtful code reviews, architectural discussions, and mentorship of junior engineers.

• Real product ownership — ship production code daily and influence core system decisions.

• Shape the engineering culture — help define standards, patterns, and how we build.

• Work on real problems — talk directly to CEOs, CMOs, and VPs at consumer brands doing $80M–$500M in revenue.

• High-trust environment — small team, minimal process, high accountability.

• You need stable, long-term roadmaps — priorities can sometimes shift in 24–48 hour cycles.

• You prefer narrowly scoped tickets over owning problems end-to-end.

• You want heavy DevOps support or a large infra team to abstract complexity away.

• You're uncomfortable working inside fast-moving, partially-defined systems.

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience with end-to-end ownership in a full-stack role.

• Strong hands-on experience with Python and/or Node.js on the backend and React + TypeScript on the frontend.

• Deep understanding of front-end state management — how to structure, scope, and evolve state as complexity grows. Familiarity with patterns like React Query / TanStack Query for server state.

• Experience designing and working with relational data models (PostgreSQL).

• Comfort operating in a cloud environment (GCP or similar) and deploying containerized services (Docker; Kubernetes familiarity a plus).

• Proven experience integrating AI/ML systems into production products — especially LLMs, retrieval-augmented workflows, or agentic systems.

• Strong product instincts: you think about UX, performance, and correctness, not just implementation.

• Ability to reason about complex systems and make them simpler, more reliable, and easier to work with.

• Prior experience at an early-stage startup or as a founder.

• Background working on AI-powered or data-intensive products.

• React + TypeScript frontend

• Node.js and Python backend services

• PostgreSQL (and Redis where appropriate)

• Google Cloud Platform

• Dockerized services (Kubernetes familiarity helpful, not required)

• LLMs from OpenAI, Anthropic, and open-source models

• Agent orchestration, retrieval, and evaluation systems built in-house

• Ship immediately. You'll be contributing to production systems from week one.

• Build momentum. Small, frequent PRs to establish rhythm and trust.

• Learn the system. Understand our agent architecture, data flows, and product constraints.

• Improve what exists. Bring fresh eyes to architecture and implementation — we want your feedback.

• Get close to users. Learn directly from real customer workflows and pain points.

• Unlimited Vacation & 10 Paid Holidays

• Remote-First Culture with hubs in NY, SF, Lisbon, São Paulo, Barcelona & more

• Comprehensive Medical, Dental & Vision Benefits

• 401(k) with Company Match, Equity, and Profit Sharing

• Parental Leave & Wellness Stipends

• Cross-functional learning opportunities across the entire Darkroom ecosystem

Compensation Range: $200,000 – $250,000 base salary per year + performance bonus eligibility

This range represents the minimum and maximum compensation Darkroom reasonably and in good faith believes it would pay for this role at the time of posting. Actual compensation will be determined based on relevant experience, skills, qualifications, geographic location, and internal equity.

This role may also be eligible for additional compensation, including discretionary bonuses, equity, and benefits.

Darkroom is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion across race, religion, gender identity, age, disability status, and background. We welcome candidates from all walks of life.