Full-Stack Engineer - Remote, Full-Time

About Theo Reads Romance is a $5.8B market growing 40% annually. We're building the platform where readers discover stories by romance trope, kink, spice level, and content warnings—and where authors publish with AI-assisted tools and deep reader analytics. Think Spotify's discovery engine meets Kindle, purpose-built for romance and erotica. We've launched 800+ stories with 50 founding authors since 2025 and came out of beta in January 2026. We've also solved one of the hardest infrastructure problems in this space—payment processing for adult-adjacent content—which most startups in this category never crack.

Tech Stack Frontend: Vue 3, Nuxt 3, Vuetify, TypeScript Backend: tRPC, Express, Postgres, Typesense, Elasticsearch Infrastructure: GCP Cloud Run, Firebase (auth/storage) Other: Stripe integration, AI features

How We Work We're an AI-native engineering team. You'll work extensively with Claude Code and other AI tools to ship faster—our AI-native workflow means you'll ship more with less friction.This means:

• You'll use AI to eliminate the tedious parts of development so you can focus on the interesting problems
• You review and understand AI-generated code (not just copy-paste)
• You focus on architecture, product decisions, and quality—AI handles the boilerplate
• The result: you'll ship at a pace that would normally require a much larger team, without the burnout

If you've never used AI coding tools, that's fine—but you should be excited to learn, not resistant to it. .

What You'll Do

• Build features across the full stack (you'll touch everything)
• Own the e-reader experience and AI-assisted editor
• Launch a book cover design tool
• Maintain payment processing (Stripe and Payment Labs—both already integrated; securing these for romance/erotica content is notoriously difficult, so this is critical infrastructure)
• Work on progressive web app
• Launch mobile app sometime in 2026
• Work directly with the CEO—no layers of management
• Help hire and grow the engineering team

You Should Have

• 3+ years of full-stack experience
• Strong Vue.js skills (Vue 3 preferred) OR React + willingness to learn Vue
• TypeScript proficiency
• Experience with Postgres and building REST/tRPC APIs
• Comfort deploying to cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, or similar)
• Ability to work independently and ship fast
• Excitement about using AI tools to amplify your output

Nice to Have

• Firebase experience
• Payment integration (Stripe)
• Search systems (Typesense, Elasticsearch)
• AI/LLM integration experience
• Experience with AI coding assistants (Claude, Cursor, Copilot)

Why Join

• Early team member at a high-growth startup in a $5.8B market
• Direct access to experienced founder (20+ years at AmEx, Gartner, Saks Fifth Avenue and 12+ startups)
• Shape the product, not just execute tickets
• AI-native workflow—work smarter, not longer
• Flexible remote work from anywhere

Compensation Competitive salary benchmarked to South Africa at Rand 18,000-28,000. Please share your expectations when you apply.

About the Team

• CEO/Founder: Growth strategist with 20+ years leading marketing teams at American Express, Martha Stewart, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Gartner
• Tech Advisor: AI expert and former Jasper AI team member
• Author Lead: Top 10% romance author and TikTok influencer managing social and author programs

To Apply Email parneet@theoreads.com with:

• Your resume
• A link to something you've built (GitHub, live project, etc.)
• Your location and salary expectations
• Brief note on why this role interests you
• This is a full-time role for individuals. No agencies or dev shops please.