Full-Stack Developer, AI-Powered Eulogy Web App - PT/FT - Overlap EST

About the client

Client is a full-service marketing agency near New York City with 20 years in business. It builds WordPress sites and manages digital marketing for clients. This is its first SaaS product, built for an end client, and the agency is looking for a developer who can be the technical lead on the application layer.

A subscription web app where users fill out a guided questionnaire about their life (30–40 questions across childhood, family, work, milestones, values, and memories). The app then uses an LLM (OpenAI or Anthropic) to generate a professionally written Life Story or Eulogy. Users can edit the result, download it as a formatted PDF or an editable Word file, and return over time to update their answers and generate new versions.

The agency will design and build the WordPress marketing site and front end. You will own everything behind it.

What you'll build

• Architecture and hosting. Recommend the stack, the hosting setup, and how the app integrates with WordPress (custom plugin vs. a decoupled app).
• Database. Design the schema for users, questionnaire answers, generated stories, revisions, and subscription status.
• Authentication and access control. Each user can see only their own data and documents.
• Questionnaire. Save-and-resume, skippable questions, editable answers.
• AI integration. Send answers to the LLM securely, with separate prompt structures for Life Story and Eulogy. - Handle errors and retries, and include usage and cost controls.
• Background processing. Generation completes even if the user closes the page, and retries never produce duplicate jobs.
• Document generation. Well-typeset PDF and editable .docx output, with consistent headings, typography, and page breaks.
• Stripe payments. One-time payment for a Eulogy and a monthly subscription for the Life Story. Payment status controls access, including failed renewals and cancellations.
• Version history. Keep the original answers, user edits, and prior drafts across regenerations.
• Customer dashboard, testing, deployment, and documentation, plus a practical maintenance plan.

Must-have

• 5+ years of full-stack development, with real production apps shipped end to end
• Strong backend experience in PHP or Python (Django/Flask), plus relational database design (MySQL or PostgreSQL)
• Experience integrating custom applications with WordPress (custom plugins, WP REST API, or shared authentication between WordPress and an external app)
• Stripe Billing in production: subscriptions, one-time payments, webhooks, and dunning
• LLM API integration (OpenAI and/or Anthropic) in a shipped product
• Job queues and background workers
• Server-side PDF and DOCX generation
• Comfortable advising non-technical stakeholders on architecture and estimates
• At least 4 hours of overlap with US Eastern Time

Nice-to-have

• React for the dashboard or editor UI
• Membership plugins (MemberPress, WooCommerce Subscriptions)
• Experience handling sensitive personal data (GDPR/CCPA)
• Background in SaaS MVP builds for agencies