Senior API Engineer (FastAPI / Python)

About us

Photoroom launched in 2020 after being accepted into Y Combinator and has become the world's most popular AI photo editor over the past four years. Our goal is to create the technology allowing anyone create studio-level product images in minutes.

With over 300 million downloads and processing 5+ billion images annually, we serve both individual creators and major enterprises like Amazon, DoorDash, and Decathlon through our B2C app and B2B API solutions.

We're a profitable, remote-friendly company that has raised Series B funding and aims for 40% year-over-year growth. Our team of 100+ passionate builders focuses on craft, innovation, and collaboration, creating exceptional impact for entrepreneurs and businesses worldwide.

• Role: Senior API Engineer (Fast API/Python)

• Compensation: 75-100k (local currency)

• Location: Remote across Europe with monthly Paris office visits (fully reimbursed)

✨ About the role ✨

• You will be responsible for the design and development of our public API product (photoroom.com/api/), used both by self-service developers and by our largest enterprise customers (DoorDash, Decathlon, Amazon, etc.) to integrate Photoroom's technology in their products. Our Image Editing API enables anyone to easily create high-quality images with a variety of AI-powered features including background removal, AI shadows, AI backgrounds…

• You will collaborate with your team to prioritize and implement the most impactful features for the API. This includes adding new features, ensuring robustness of existing ones, minimizing downtime, and ensuring our documentation is top-notch.

• You will get fast feedback from API users and will iterate quickly (we update the API several times a week). You will follow the usage of the API and make decisions based on that.

• The API is growing fast and sits at the intersection of developer experience and state-of-the-art AI image models. You'll be building the interface through which external developers access Photoroom's AI.

• You will join a small, senior team (two engineers and a product manager) working on the API product, with close collaboration across sales, machine learning, backend, and engine teams. You'll have a direct impact on the product from day one.

• You will work within a multicultural team composed of ~100 passionate, friendly & committed folks.

✨ You might thrive in this role if: ✨

• You have 7+ years of professional Python backend experience, including 3+ years designing and maintaining APIs consumed by external partners (not just internal services).

• You have strong experience with Python and FastAPI (or Starlette), including async patterns (asyncio, httpx), dependency injection, and middleware. You've debugged concurrency issues in production and made architectural decisions about async at scale.

• You have owned the design and evolution of a public-facing API surface: consistent resource naming, versioning strategies, and deliberate deprecation policies that let the API grow without breaking consumers. In practice, this means you've shaped OpenAPI schemas (ideally via Pydantic models), made hard calls on what to expose vs. keep internal, and kept the contract clean as it scaled.

• You have a deep understanding of API reliability and are committed to maintaining high standards of uptime, performance, and consistency.

• You are deeply pragmatic. You favor speed of iteration over perfection, always leveraging the Python ecosystem (FastAPI's built-in features, background tasks, well-maintained libraries) to avoid reinventing the wheel.

• You have a strong sense of ownership and collaboration. You take initiative and are at ease making product & technical decisions while working closely with the rest of the team (product, engineering, sales, machine learning).

• You have worked in a high-performing engineering team with strong technical standards, ideally in a fast-growing startup.

• Bonus point if you have experience with Python API deployment patterns (uvicorn/gunicorn, Docker, health checks, graceful shutdowns).

• Bonus point if you have worked on image editing (Pillow, pyvips…) in Python.

• Bonus point if you have experience integrating image AI models (text-to-image, image editing) behind an API, handling model inference, managing latency expectations, and abstracting complexity away from API consumers.

• Bonus point if you have experience with Node.js (our current API runs on Node.js and is being migrated to FastAPI).

• Bonus point if you have created integrations for an API (no-code, custom integrations).

• You are fluent in English (French is not required!).

Benefits

• Work flexibly from anywhere in Europe within a 3-hour flight from Paris (HQ)

• Regular team gatherings, including in-person onboarding in Paris (1-2 weeks), yearly company offsite and team retreat, quarterly in-person meetings (monthly during probation period), and social events like winter party and hackathons

• 30 days annual leave plus local public holidays

• Competitive equity package with stock options/BSPCE, giving you ownership in our growing company

• €1000 one-time home office grant OR €400 per month co-working space stipend

• €1,000 annual learning and development budget for training, courses, books, and skill development

• Private health insurance

• Access to personalised mental health support, including 1:1 sessions with therapists or coaches, self-care tools, and well-being resources via MokaCare

• Sports and cultural activities reimbursement

• Relocation support (up to 10k) available for those choosing to move to France, including apartment finding and visa assistance

Note: Visa sponsorship and relocation support are only available for positions based in France. We cannot sponsor visas for remote positions outside of France.

Hiring Process

• Screening call with Talent Manager (30min)

• Technical Interview (1hr)

• Take-home assignment (duration varies by role) and live review with the team (1 hr)

• Culture fit interviews and meet the team (~3h in total)

• 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.