ABOUT THE COMPANY

QARL is an early-stage startup building next-generation interactive AI-powered digital humans. Our mission is to reinvent how people engage with AI through fun, interactive video agents. Founded in 2024, we're a small but mighty team led by serial entrepreneur and 3X exited founder Paul Kruszewski. Supported by leading partners including Google and AWS, we're moving fast and pushing boundaries to define the future of human-machine interaction.

OPPORTUNITY

In this 1-month contract role, you'll design and implement additional features to QARL's web portal — enabling users to upload and persistently store custom avatars, backgrounds, voice clips, and other AI-related assets to power our AI-generated video pipeline. You will also help harden the platform with foundational cybersecurity measures. This is a hands-on, high-impact engagement working directly alongside our engineering and R&D leadership. This position has the potential to extend to a full-time role for the right candidate.

JOB DESCRIPTION

Primary responsibilities: 

• Re-architect and re-implement the user resource management system from scratch: replace the existing flat GCP bucket structure with GCP Cloud Storage (binary assets) and Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL) (structured metadata, resource records, and per-user upload quotas)
• Design a multi-tenant PostgreSQL schema supporting users as members of organizations, with org-level resource sharing and strict cross-organization data segregation
• Design and implement a clean REST API backend in Python (FastAPI) to handle user resource management, on-demand (lazy) voice sample retrieval, and secure asset retrieval via signed URLs
• Integrate with the existing Firebase Authentication system to enforce per-user and per-organization resource access controls
• Implement foundational cybersecurity measures, including rate limiting, input validation, bot/crawler mitigation, and basic DDoS protection via GCP Cloud Armor
• Conduct basic security due-diligence, including a lightweight penetration test covering OWASP Top 10 risks, and document findings with remediation recommendations

Education level:

Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.

Required Skills:

• 1–3 years of industry experience in full stack web development
• React (functional components, hooks, file upload UX)
• GCP ecosystem: Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL)
• REST API design including multipart/form-data file handling
• Firebase Authentication (client and server-side SDK integration)
• Relational schema design including multi-tenancy and role/permission modelling
• Containerization with Docker and orchestration with Kubernetes
• Foundational security knowledge: OWASP Top 10, input sanitization, rate limiting, CORS policies

Nice-to-have Skills:

• GCP Cloud Armor or equivalent DDoS/bot mitigation configuration
• Basic penetration testing tools (e.g. Burp Suite, OWASP ZAP)
• Infrastructure-as-code experience (Terraform or similar)

BENEFITS

• Competitive compensation package, with the possibility of converting to full-time employment with stock options, health benefits, and more
• Fully in-person work culture (no remote work) with office in downtown Montreal, with lunch provided on Tuesdays
• Stipends applicable towards continuous learning and subscriptions to Anthropic Claude AI
• Work with one of the world's best teams in artificial emotional intelligence and digital humans