Ai Agent Platform Engineer - Apis & Data Commerce

Contract-to-Hire | Pensacola, Florida

ZIP-Codes.Com / Datasheer is a small, established data company that has been providing postal code and related location data for the United States and Canada for more than 23 years.

We are looking for a senior, hands-on software engineer to lead an important new project.

Our objective is to build the infrastructure that will allow AI agents to discover the data products we sell, understand what data is available, determine pricing and licensing, authenticate, purchase or access authorized data, and receive structured results with as little friction as possible.

In simple terms, we want to build the rails that allow AI agents to become customers of our data platform.

What We Are Looking For

This is primarily a backend/API/platform engineering role , not a chatbot or prompt-engineering position.

The right candidate should have strong hands-on experience building production backend systems and APIs, including several of the following:

• REST APIs and API architecture
• Python/FastAPI or comparable backend frameworks
• OpenAPI, JSON Schema and structured JSON data
• Authentication and authorization
• API keys and/or OAuth
• Permissions, customer entitlements and access control
• Usage metering and rate limiting
• Paid APIs, SaaS platforms or data products
• Payment or purchasing integrations
• Database design and SQL
• Cloud deployment and production monitoring
• AI-agent tool calling
• Model Context Protocol (MCP) or comparable agent/tool integration

Direct MCP experience is highly desirable but not absolutely required. We would also consider an exceptional senior backend/API engineer who clearly understands how modern AI agents interact with APIs, tools and commercial services and can demonstrate how they would approach the problem.

Experience with commercial datasets, geospatial/location data, Stripe, agentic commerce or machine-to-machine purchasing would be particularly valuable.

What You Would Do

You would take the technical lead on this new AI-agent initiative while working closely with the owners of the company and our senior technical lead, James Harris .

James has deep knowledge of our existing systems, databases, APIs, data products and business processes and will be an important technical partner on the project. The successful candidate will work closely with James to understand the current architecture, determine what should be reused, and design the best path forward.

The goal is not to replace our existing systems unnecessarily. It is to build on a mature platform and extend it so AI agents can interact with our products safely and commercially.

You would help design the architecture and personally implement the new agent-ready layer, while collaborating with James on integration with our existing infrastructure.

We do not want someone who simply produces an architecture document and hands the implementation to someone else. We are looking for someone who can both design and build the system.

James is also located in Pensacola, and the role will include some initial in-person technical knowledge transfer and collaboration so the new engineer can become familiar with the platform quickly.

What Success Looks Like

A successful initial version should allow an independent AI agent to:

Discover ZIP-Codes.Com → determine what data product it needs → understand the available fields and schema → understand pricing/licensing → authenticate appropriately → purchase or access authorized data → receive a structured result.

Our proprietary paid data must remain protected throughout this process.

The Opportunity

This will begin as a paid project/contract position and we are looking for someone who can start immediately.

However, we are not necessarily looking for a short-term freelancer.

For the right person who performs well and enjoys working with us, this could develop into a full-time position with the company.

If the agent-access/data-commerce strategy develops the way we believe it can, there may also be an equity opportunity for the right person who becomes an important long-term part of building this side of the company.

We are a small company, which means the person in this role can have a significant influence on both the technology and the direction of the business.

When Applying

Please tell us briefly about something you have personally built involving APIs, AI agents, MCP, backend platforms, authentication, payments or commercial data.

Most importantly, answer this question:

If you were given an established commercial data website with existing APIs, customer accounts and paid datasets, how would you allow an AI agent to discover a dataset, understand what it contains, determine the price, obtain authorization and retrieve the data without making the proprietary data publicly accessible?

We are much more interested in your answer and examples of things you have actually built than degrees, certifications or buzzwords.