Software Engineer

Backend Software Engineer - Core Outfitting

Full-Time | EST Hours | USD $6,000–$9,000/month | Long-Term Contractor

About the Company

Our client is a well-established technology company building AI-powered solutions for large-scale retail and e-commerce platforms. Their products power personalization, product discovery, and automated merchandising experiences used by millions of shoppers every month across web, mobile, and in-store channels.

What differentiates their platform is not only advanced AI capabilities, but also more than a decade of proprietary data, workflows, quality controls, and domain expertise. These foundations allows them to deliver production-grade, brand-safe AI systems that operate reliably at enterprise scale.

About the Role

They're building the future of AI-powered fashion & retail automation, and they need a craftsperson who lives and breathes Clojure.

Here's what they're actually building: AI workflows that generate outfit images, styled bundles, and "Complete the Look" recommendations at scale. Systems that pair products into looks that boost AOV and drive conversion. Intelligent review flows where humans and AI collaborate to produce millions of styled recommendations. Vector search architectures that power semantic discovery and product similarity across our catalog. All of this content must reach shoppers through high-scale APIs serving 175+ enterprise retailers and 100M+ shoppers monthly, fast, reliable, and integrated into our existing platform.

You'll work in Clojure and ClojureScript across the stack, but this is backend-heavy. You'll own features end-to-end: from schema design to API implementation to the review UI that your colleagues use daily.

They're a team of 12+ Clojure engineers who move fast and care about craft. They value ownership deeply. You'll have autonomy to architect solutions, make technical decisions, and ship production code quickly. If you're curious, opinionated about good code, and excited to build AI systems that actually work at scale, keep reading.

How Our Client Works

They are a highly collaborative team. They solve hard technical problems together, debate approaches in real time, and set priorities through live conversation. Their engineers chose this way of working because it lets them move faster and smarter on complex decisions. That means you'll spend a meaningful portion of your week in design discussions, technical problem-solving sessions, and team syncs, and that rhythm is core to who they are.

If you do your best thinking out loud, enjoy real-time debate, and get energy from collaborating closely with others, you will thrive here.

What You Will Do

• Temporal workflows that orchestrate multi-step AI operations: product attribution, laydown image generation, outfit creation, and outfit copy generation
• Backend services in Clojure that integrate with LLM APIs (GPT, Gemini, etc.), manage context and prompts, handle streaming responses, and process structured outputs
• Data models and PostgreSQL schemas that support complex AI workflows, vector embeddings, and integration with our existing product catalog
• RAG pipelines using Qdrant for semantic search, similarity matching, and context retrieval that powers smarter AI recommendations
• ClojureScript UIs for review workflows where humans validate, edit, and improve AI-generated content
• APIs and data pipelines that connect everything together, monitoring systems that track AI quality, and the infrastructure that lets us ship fast

Must-Have Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree from an accredited college or university in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or other related fields
• Strong Clojure and ClojureScript experience. You've built production systems, you understand functional programming deeply, and you're comfortable with the ecosystem (shadow-cljs, re-frame, reagent etc.)
• Solid SQL skills and database design experience. You can model complex domains in PostgreSQL, write efficient queries, design schemas, and handle migrations. This is important.
• Hands-on familiarity with LLMs. You have worked with LLM APIs and understand prompt engineering, context windows, and the practical challenges of non-deterministic outputs. Production experience is a strong plus, but we care more about genuine understanding than where you got it
• Collaborative by nature. You enjoy solving problems out loud with others, you are comfortable spending a meaningful part of your week in live technical discussion, and you bring energy that lifts the team around you
• Backend engineering fundamentals. You know how to build APIs, design data flows, handle errors gracefully, and architect systems that scale
• High velocity. You ship often. You balance speed with quality, you know when to refactor and when to iterate, and you don't let perfect be the enemy of good
• Ownership mindset. You take responsibility for features from conception to production. You care about the outcome, not just writing code
• Curiosity. You're interested in AI, workflow orchestration, vector search, frontend UIs, data modeling, and figuring out how all the pieces fit together

Nice-to-Have Qualifications

• Experience integrating LLMs into production systems
• Experience with Java and the JVM ecosystem
• Experience with Temporal or similar workflow orchestration systems (Airflow, Dagster, Step Functions)
• Familiarity with vector databases like Qdrant, Pinecone, or Weaviate, and RAG architectures
• Experience with MCP (Model Context Protocol) or building tool-calling systems where LLMs interact with external services
• Understanding of image generation models, multimodal AI, or working with vision APIs
• Contributions to open-source Clojure projects
• Background in other functional programming languages (Haskell, OCaml, Elixir, Scala)
• Experience building developer tools, automation systems, or human-in-the-loop workflows

Client Values

Their values reflect what is important to them and serve as the foundation in which they do business. Each core value is best illustrated by actions and attitudes that each team member practices. They define what working with our client means and what their teams embodies through their time here.

• We care deeply about delivering high quality work
• We work to be the best partners possible
• We get things done
• We believe the right team matters most
• We think like customers and act like owners
• We relish being pioneers

Hiring Process

Their streamlined process moves quickly while giving candidates a fair opportunity to demonstrate their strengths:

1. 15–20 Minute Live Coding Challenge – Focused on fundamentals and problem-solving
2. Cultural Fit Interview – Alignment on communication, collaboration, and mindset
3. Final Technical Live Coding Session – Real-world scenario simulation