Senior Engineer, Publisher Operations (Part-or-Full Time, Remote, AI-Augmented)

Senior Engineer, Publisher Operations (Part-or-Full Time, Remote, AI-Augmented) We run a portfolio of digital news and content properties. We are hiring a senior engineer to own the technical operations layer of the web-publishing operation - the WordPress theme builds, website maintenance, the server fleet, ads.txt changes, ad-code placements, the CloudFlare system, etc. This is a part-or-full time, remote, 1099 / contractor / EOR-flexible role. We pay competitively for senior engineering experience. We work in an AI-first operating mode: agentic tooling is not a nice-to-have, it is how we ship. We are open to part-time that becomes full-time or starting at full-time, depending on candidate strength and proven track record. WHAT YOU WILL OWN Day-one scope is the tactical operations layer of a multi-brand publisher: - WordPress production work across roughly 20 brand sites (themes, ACF, Yoast, custom plugins) - Cloudflare at fleet scale (DNS, WAF rules, bot defense, IVT remediation rollouts, rule deployment against a designed architecture) - Ad-stack execution across multiple ad networks (ads.txt, sellers.json, publisher_id hygiene, vendor ad-code deployment, in-email ad code) - Server fleet operations on Linux hosts (SSH, nginx, log analysis, deployment tooling, Linode + Forge) - Vendor email coordination with ad-network reps (technical context, ad-code shipping, status follow-up) - Tactical revenue-per-thousand work (placement audits, fill-rate diagnostics, before/after evidence packages) - Internal operational reporting on what shipped, what is in flight, and what is blocked The work is wide-surface, not deep-single-stack. You will touch many properties in any given week, not one product. WHAT YOU GROW INTO Once the tactical backlog stabilizes, the role expands into the engineering-tools and AI-agentic-systems lane in collaboration with our extremely experienced fractional CTO and our growth lead. Concrete examples: - Building scheduled-agent and MCP-style tooling for internal workflow automation - Helping ship internal publisher tools (newsletter assembly, fraud-detection substrate, lead pipelines) - Sharing the architecture work on traffic-integrity systems as they mature This is a structural senior role on a small team where AI leverage decides what one person can ship. REQUIRED - Active daily use of AI development tooling. Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or equivalent, in your current workflow. You should be able to walk us through how you use agentic tools to ship in your interview. You must actively utilize AI systems in your daily workflow. - 5+ years of professional engineering experience, with a meaningful slice in web operations, publisher operations, or ad-tech. - Familiarity with Cloudflare (DNS at minimum, WAF or workers a plus). Depth builds on the job under our CTO. - Comfortable on a Linux server fleet over SSH. nginx, log analysis, basic systemd, cron, ufw, ssh-key hygiene. - Strong written English for vendor email and internal documentation. - Ability to attend a daily 9:30am Central Time video standup. Time zones that overlap meaningfully with US business hours preferred. - Pattern of taking ownership of a wide surface and shipping without architectural hand-holding on every task. STRONGLY PREFERRED - WordPress depth: theme dev, ACF, custom plugin work, performance and SEO posture. - Ad-tech operational exposure: ads.txt / sellers.json, publisher_id structure, vendor ad-code deployment, AdSense / programmatic / native ad networks from the publisher side. - IVT / bot-defense or ad-fraud forensics experience: reading Cloudflare firewall events, ASN-level traffic patterns, distinguishing real human traffic from datacenter / commercial-crawler / headless-browser patterns. - Experience working under a senior architect where you execute on architecture you did not design. - History of shipping internal tools or automations that compressed your own role. THE SHAPE OF THE ENGAGEMENT - If Part-time, 15 to 25 hours per week, flexible week-by-week. Some weeks land at the upper end during rollouts or crises; some weeks at the lower end during steady state. - If Full-time, 40+ hours per week, set hours other than emergencies. - Remote. Time-zone overlap with US Central is required for standup; otherwise async-first. - Engagement structure flexible. 1099 (US), agency placement, or EOR (Deel / Remote / Oyster) for non-US. We are open to whichever shape works on your side. - Reporting line. Daily work direction from the CEO at standup. Senior technical collaboration and architecture review from our CTO. Daily stand-down to review bottlenecks and status. - We heavily use AI for task management, project management, etc. Proficiency in building extreme context for your AI-enhanced engineering suite of tools and workflows is fundamental. WHAT WE ARE NOT LOOKING FOR - Engineers who treat AI tooling as an experiment rather than a daily driver - Architecturally restless candidates looking to redesign systems they have not yet operated - Engineers whose recent work was at companies adversarial to our editorial posture (we will share the editorial posture at first-call stage) - Rigid workers who can’t be flexible if the situation requires it - Engineers who need someone to teach them anything “new” - this is a self-education oriented position and culture. HOW TO APPLY Reply with: 1. A short note on how AI development tooling has changed how you ship in the last 12 months. One paragraph, concrete, no marketing language. 2. Resume or a public profile that captures recent work. 3. Two or three links to work you would point to as representative of the surface above (ad-stack, CF, publisher tools, internal automations, anything in the neighborhood). 4. Your time zone and your earliest realistic start window. We screen within a week. Technical screen runs with our CTO. Final conversation with the CEO. Decision and offer within two weeks of first reply for candidates who clear screening.