Full Stack Software Developer

ABOUT THE JOB Ruca is hiring a Full Stack Software Developer (5–8 years experience) to join our Colombia Studio, reporting to the Studio Head.
As a member of our Colombia Local Studio, you'll work on client work, internal brands, and venture projects across a diverse range of engagements, alongside a global community of design creatives, including our Local Studios in Bogotá, Manila and Los Angeles. This is a role for someone already fluent in AI tools as part of their creative process, with a sharp eye for craft, ready to grow inside a cooperative that rewards initiative and shares its success.At Ruca we need engineers who operate strategically, not just execute tickets. The ideal candidate is a strong software engineer who thinks like a product person: able to make architectural calls and reason about why we're building something, not only how.
Core responsibilitiesDesign, build, and ship full stack web applications (frontend, backend, database, deployment) for both external clients and internal use.Translate ambiguous business needs into scoped technical solutions, asking the right questions early rather than waiting for a full spec.Make architectural calls — system design, technical judgment, and pragmatic stack choices — and reason about why we're building something, not only how.Build internal tools and automations for the agency that expand what the team can deliver without adding staff.Deliver client-facing features and products to a professional, presentation-ready standard.Work side by side with designers to integrate design and engineering seamlessly.Integrate AI/LLM capabilities into products where they add real value — AI-assisted workflows, agentic features, retrieval-based tools, embedded copilots — not AI for its own sake.Own projects end-to-end: architecture, implementation, testing, deployment, and basic maintenance.Set up and maintain monitoring, logging, and alerting across applications and infrastructure to catch issues before they impact users.Identify opportunities to improve internal processes or client offerings, and bring ideas forward rather than waiting to be assigned.QUALIFICATIONSBackground & Experience:5–8 years of professional full stack development experience.Proven architectural know-how — system design, technical judgment, and pragmatic stack choices, not just implementation.A product mindset — track record of taking an ambiguous business problem and shaping it into the right solution, not just the requested one.Hands-on experience building with LLM APIs (Anthropic, OpenAI, or similar) — prompting, tool use/function calling, retrieval-augmented generation, or agentic workflows.Prior experience working across an agency or consultancy model (multiple concurrent projects/clients) is a plus.Skills & Tools:Strong modern JavaScript/TypeScript; proficiency with a frontend framework (React or similar) and a backend framework/runtime (Node.js or similar).Solid database skills — relational (PostgreSQL/MySQL) and familiarity with NoSQL options.Comfortable owning deployment and infrastructure at a small-team scale (cloud hosting, CI/CD, containerization).API design and integration, including third-party and internal service integrations.Fluency with AI-assisted coding tools as a daily driver, not a novelty.Strong verbal and written English communication skills, for both internal and client-facing audiences.Design sensibility — enough frontend/UX instinct to make client-facing work look and feel polished is a plus.Communicate clearly and proactively in English, both in writing and verbally, with founders and, at times, clients.
You might be our person if you think like an owner, not a ticket-taker. You can take a loosely defined problem, reason about the why as much as the how, and drive it to a shipped solution without heavy supervision. You're trustworthy with ambiguity, willing to make and defend reasonable technical decisions independently, and comfortable context-switching between client-facing product work and internal tooling. You use AI tools fluently, not as a novelty, and you know when they're the right call for a feature and when they're not. Most of all, you want to build inside a cooperative that shares in what it creates.ABOUT US Ruca, a global nomadic tribe. We are a flat, non-hierarchical self-organizing community for creatives by creatives. We are undefined by design. We are a people-first organization allowing our passions to define our paths. We are a home for hustlers to connect, hipsters to dream, and hackers to build cool shit.Ruca, our deep-rooted beliefs. Ruca operates with a common understanding of how the best work gets done. We keep things simple and consistently focus on removing all potential barriers to doing great things together at speed. Our beliefs have stayed the same since we were two people to now more than 70. These themes are crowdsourced from and subscribed to by our co-op members and partners based on why they love Ruca and convene here.Remote firstLight footprintNo bullshitQuiet confidenceDoers, not reviewersEclectic at speedDesign kith & kinhttps://ruca.co/💬 Ready to join us? If you're interested in applying or learning more, send us a message or click "Apply" — we'd love to hear from you!