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Full Stack Engineer

Seoul (Hybrid) • Full-time

  • VISA SPONSORSHIP
  • KOREAN: FLUENT
  • Full Stack
  • Javascript
  • React
  • Node.js

Founding Engineer (Full Stack)

Seoul, South Korea (Remote-friendly) • Full-time

We’re looking for a top 1% engineer who truly cares about AI ethics.

In the age of AI, we’re experiencing unprecedented efficiency.

Image and video generation technologies are advancing at an extraordinary speed. They offer efficiency—but at the same time, the images of countless creators and ordinary people are scraped as AI training data without consent or compensation. Beyond that, original creative works are copied without copyright protection, and commercial images that resemble a person’s face are generated and used—sometimes maliciously—without any rights protection.

Today, it is a reality that anyone can generate commercial images or harmful content using your face.

We build an ecosystem that protects people’s digital identities ethically and enables them to profit from their own likeness rights fairly.

Spotlite began in 2023 as a marketplace aiming to make the opaque, inefficient professional model-booking industry as easy and transparent as Airbnb. Over the past two years, we’ve grown from 50 to more than 4,000 professional models on the platform, generated over KRW 1 billion in GMV, and have become the service of choice for major brands in Korea.

Our professional model users are more vulnerable than anyone to unauthorized use or exploitation of their likeness. To solve this, we expanded our vision.

Spotlite is now moving beyond the marketplace, driven by our mission to protect human creativity.

We are building:

  • An AI Agent that detects and responds when a person’s face is used without permission in generative AI tools
  • Infrastructure and services that allow your digital self to participate in content and media—under your control—without ever going to a physical shoot
  • A licensing system for ethically sourced biometric data used in AI model training, obtained with explicit consent from the rightful owner

Protecting the uniqueness of the human face in a rapidly changing AI era. Pursuing efficiency in content creation while continuously asking what is right.

If you want to do more than just “optimize workflows with AI” — if you care about safeguarding the values we must not lose in this era — we would love to have you join our journey at Spotlite.

Role Overview

This role is a Founding Engineer, responsible for re-architecting and rebuilding the entire product, from marketplace infrastructure to our next-generation IP-protection platform.

What You’ll Do

Months 1–3: Maintain Marketplace 1.0 (existing product)

  • Review and maintain the current codebase
  • Strengthen core systems (chat, notifications, booking funnel, etc.)
  • Collaborate with the CX team to plan and develop new features based on user needs

Months 3–6: Support development of Marketplace 2.0

  • Contribute to the design and development of our AI Agent (Spring Boot + Spring AI)
  • Support semantic search using vector-based retrieval
  • Support development of globally-compliant features such as data protection, payments, onboarding, and more

Qualifications

Required

  • 5+ years experience in web backend development (Candidates with only MLOps/data engineering experience are not eligible)
    • Strong hands-on experience with standard backend frameworks (Express, NestJS, etc.)
    • Experience designing + building RESTful APIs
    • Experience using ORM and designing/managing databases
    • Experience implementing auth systems (authentication/authorization)
    • Experience with CI/CD pipelines & deployments
  • Strong real-world experience with Node.js
    • Required for maintaining Marketplace 1.0 (TypeScript/NestJS)
  • Frontend development capability
    • Real-world experience with React/Next.js
    • Ability to build UI using a design system
  • Experience working on large-scale products
    • Production product development with real users
    • Long-term product ownership, not short-term/POC-only
  • Ability to work in English with teammates who do not speak Korean

Nice to Have

  • Fluent English speaking ability
  • Experience building marketplaces or platforms
  • Experience applying AI agent frameworks (LangChain, Spring AI, etc.)
  • Early-stage startup experience (<10 members)
  • Experience leading technical decision-making

Compensation & Benefits

Compensation

  • Competitive salary (negotiable based on experience)
  • Stock options available

Work environment

  • Remote work & flexible schedule
  • Office located a 7-minute walk from Seongsu Station (Line 2)
  • English-friendly work environment in Korea
  • A small but global team of 7 (Korea, Canada, Indonesia, and more)

Benefits

  • Full social insurance (4대 보험)
  • All the equipment and tools you need
  • Visa sponsorship available if needed

How to Apply

Please send the following to hannah@teamspotlite.com:

  1. Resume
  2. A short intro (3–5 sentences):
    • Why this mission matters to you
    • Links to projects you’ve worked on (professional or side projects)
    • Your Korean & English proficiency level