Staff Engineer, AI-Native Commerce

Phoenix is the Autonomous Commerce Platform for DTC Founders . We unify storefronts, checkout, payments, and operations into one platform where AI agents handle the operational grind and merchants focus on growth. We set out to build the "Shopify of Direct Response" and along the way recognized something bigger. Direct response is roughly a third of all ecommerce transactions, a trillion-dollar market chronically overlooked by Silicon Valley. The merchants who run it are obsessive about tooling. They live and die by velocity, conversion, and margin. They have no brand moats. They only compete on operations, which is exactly what makes them ripe for agentic disruption and the earliest, fastest adopters of AI agents in commerce. That insight reframed Phoenix from "the Shopify of DR" to the AI Agent Platform for DTC Founders. This is a category-defining bet, and we are running at it from a position of strength. Where We Are Today 8-figure ARR growing 100%+ YoY Strong unit economics and efficient growth Rapid merchant adoption and expanding market presence Backed by experienced operators and investors with a history of building and scaling successful businesses Why Now This is a rare opportunity for a technical leader to step into a company with proven revenue, product-market fit, an established team, and a large market opportunity. Three things make this an inflection point: Product-market fit is established. Demand continues to grow, merchant adoption is accelerating, and Phoenix is outperforming expectations. There is an opportunity to define a category. While many companies are building AI tools for commerce, few are focused on helping sophisticated DTC operators automate revenue-generating decisions at scale. Our customers are AI-ready. They adopt technology quickly when it drives measurable business outcomes, creating an ideal environment for agentic products. The Role We are hiring a Staff Engineer to help build the technical foundation of Phoenix’s next-generation storefront platform. You will architect and ship: An agentic page builder Autonomous deployment and optimization pipelines AI infrastructure powering merchant-facing workflows This is a highly hands-on role. You will write code, design systems, drive architecture decisions, and own outcomes. This is not a management role. You’ll partner closely with the Engineering Lead for Storefronts and the Product Lead shaping the product vision. The core payments and checkout infrastructure already exists and operates at scale. Your focus is building the next layer: a storefront system where merchants and AI agents collaborate to create high-converting landing pages, advertorials, and buyer journeys. What You'll Own Storefront Builder Architecture Own the architecture behind the AI-native storefront builder: Component framework Rendering pipeline Template engine Live preview Builder APIs Tech stack includes React, Angular, TypeScript, Node.js, SQL, and Liquid. AI Infrastructure Build and expand the infrastructure enabling agent-driven workflows: MCP server evolution Agent orchestration Tool calling Schema-constrained generation Feedback loops System Design Drive architectural decisions around: API contracts Service boundaries Data modeling Performance tradeoffs Autonomous Deployment Pipeline Build systems that allow storefront pages to be: Generated Tested Validated Deployed Optimized autonomously Rendering & Performance Own performance-critical systems including: SSR / streaming rendering CDN caching Edge delivery Core Web Vitals Platform Reliability Drive reliability through: Observability Tracing SLOs Incident response What We're Looking For Required 8+ years building web platforms with Staff-level technical impact Strong experience building AI/LLM-powered systems Real hands-on work with agentic systems, orchestration, or autonomous workflows Expert-level TypeScript and Node.js Deep experience with React or Angular Strong API and systems design expertise Strong testing experience across unit, integration, and E2E Strong data modeling across relational, document, and cache systems Operational mindset around reliability and scale High ownership and strong builder mentality Preferred Shopify or Liquid templating experience Experience building CMS or page-builder systems High-performance rendering systems (SSR, streaming, caching) MCP / Model Context Protocol experience Direct response or performance commerce experience Experience building developer tooling or infrastructure products Leadership Traits We Value High ownership Decisiveness Strong recruiting and talent development capabilities Accountability Product judgment Calm under pressure Builder mentality Culture These are the values that guide how we operate: All In to Win — Operate with urgency, intensity, and a relentless bar for excellence. A Players Only — Only hire, develop, and keep A players. Protect talent density. Merchant First — Merchants are why we exist. Every decision measured by merchant impact. Entrepreneurial Spirit — Move like a Day One company. Fast, scrappy, hungry. Everyone owns. Execution Over Ego — Best ideas win regardless of source. Status and titles do not matter.