Please note: While this position is officially marked as Hybrid with a location in Croatia, the work is FULLY REMOTE. This is to ensure we’re connecting with the right talent in our region - applications from outside the Balkan region, unfortunately, cannot be considered.
Hi there!
We're building Embrin, an editorial newsletter studio for publishers. It sits between a publisher's CMS and their email provider: it pulls in the content, lets editors curate it into editions, applies on-brand templates and hands everything to the publisher's ESP to send. It's in production today, sending over 60 million emails a month, and we've just started a pilot with one of North America's largest publishers that could take that well past 100 million.
Embrin grew out of years of d.labs work with leading media houses, and it is now one of our two productised verticals. It has the full backing of the company, and it is still early enough that the next person in will shape how it is built.
Until now Embrin has been built and run by a single engineer. It works and clients are live. The next step is turning it into a product that scales, with a small team around it.
We're looking for an engineer to own Embrin: its product, its architecture and its roadmap. You'll lead a small senior team (currently one engineer), be Embrin's technical face to publishers and partners, and decide what gets built.
What you'll be doing 🛠️
- Own Embrin end-to-end: product strategy, architecture, roadmap, implementation and iteration with real users. You decide what gets built and you confirm what's done.
- Lead the team: a senior developer is already on board. You set direction, review the work and grow the team as clients come in.
- Scale it: take Embrin from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of emails a month. Performance, reliability, async processing and email delivery at volume are your problems to solve.
- Onboard publishers: process analysis, pilot scope, CMS and ESP integration, smart templates, editor training. You run the technical side of every onboarding.
- Be Embrin's technical face: join sales calls and demos with our VP Sales, run security and architecture reviews with publishers, and own the technical side of partnerships with CMS and ESP vendors.
- Run your own work: you set direction and goals, plan, execute and report, with the VP of Sales as your partner. d.labs management is yours for high-level strategy, brainstorming and to unblock you anywhere you need.
- Design before building: diagrams, data models, trade-offs, alignment, then code. Production-ready from day one, not prototypes.
What we're looking for 👨 💻
Must-haves:
- Senior full-stack with deep Next.js expertise, on both the frontend and the backend/API side.
- Production PostgreSQL: data modelling, complex queries, indexing, migrations.
- Architecture sense: you can design a system, reason about async and background processing, and explain your choices.
- Product mindset: you have built products, not just features. Your own startup or side projects, successful or not, are a big plus. You understand how products get built, not only how code gets written.
- You've been the tech lead on a product, formally or not: the person who owned the architecture, made the calls and took an outcome from brief to delivery.
- Email at scale: you've integrated with or built on ESPs such as Braze, Customer.io, Mailchimp, Klaviyo or Campaigner, and you understand deliverability, IP warm-up, migrations and event tracking.
- Comfortable in front of clients: you can run a demo, answer a security questionnaire and hold your own with a publisher's CTO.
- AI-first developer: AI tools are how you work, and you know how to use them without compromising quality.
- Strong written English: you'll document decisions and explain technical concepts regularly.
Bonus:
- Background in media, publishing tech, CMS or newsletter systems.
- You've led or managed a small team.
- Our stack beyond Next.js and PostgreSQL: Supabase, Vercel, AWS, Braze, ArcXP.
This role might not be for you if…
- You prefer detailed specs and pixel-perfect designs handed to you.
- You need close direction on technical decisions.
- You want to focus purely on frontend or backend. This is truly full-stack.
- You prefer large teams with specialised roles. Right now Embrin is a very small, senior team.
- You'd rather not be on client calls.
Practical details
- Remote-first across the CET time zone, with offices in Ljubljana and Maribor if you're in Slovenia.
- Full-time.
- Target start: asap, dependent on your availability.
Why you'll enjoy working at d.labs 💜
- You'll shape where Embrin goes next. You will own product direction, technical architecture and roadmap.
- You'll work with some of the largest publishers in the world, at real scale, on a modern stack, with room to decide where AI fits.
- You'll collaborate closely with senior architects, designers and product leaders who've built and scaled platforms across fintech, SaaS and publishing, and they'll challenge you to do your best work.
- You'll have true ownership: leave your fingerprints across the stack, from system design to user experience, in a product with global reach.
- We are remote-first across the CET time zone and offer flexible working hours so you can organise your day for focus and good work–life balance.
- We're proud of our teamwork and genuinely enjoy working with one another.
- You'll work directly with our CEO and VP Sales, with senior architects across d.labs to lean on.
- If you're in Slovenia, our offices in Ljubljana and Maribor are open to you. Work from home or the office, your choice.
- Our strong People team focuses on well-being, connectedness and development.
- We love to get together, so we have multiple team buildings per year, a summer off-site, the New Year's party, etc.
💰 Compensation: €4,000–€6,000 gross monthly, potentially higher, depending on experience and seniority.
If this sounds like your kind of challenge, we'd love to hear from you!