Web Developer & AI Automation Engineer

About The Ad Firm

Founded in 2009,
The Ad Firm was born out of a mission to bring complete transparency, scientific performance, and high profitability to the digital marketing industry. Headquartered in Carlsbad, CA, we specialize in SEO, PPC, social media management, and custom web design for small and medium-sized businesses.

We maintain a 5.0-star employee rating on Glassdoor because of our immense focus on professional growth, training support, and goal-oriented incentives. As we scale into 2026, we are expanding our tech stack. We need a dual-threat engineer who can reliably build and maintain client websites while simultaneously stepping up to help us pioneer and experiment with next-generation, autonomous AI agentic workflows.

Job Summary

We are seeking a versatile Web Developer & AI Automation Engineer to join our team. In this hybrid role, you will wear two hats. First, you will act as a core web developer, building high-performance, SEO-optimized websites, managing integrations, and maintaining clean codebase structures for our clients. Second, you will act as our junior AI specialist—helping us explore, build, and test Agentic AI Workflows that automate digital marketing pipelines (like automated content generation, ad auditing, and reporting loops).

This is the ultimate role for an established developer who wants to break heavily into AI and build hands-on experience with multi-agent systems, frameworks like LangGraph/CrewAI, and frontier LLMs under the guidance of our strategic roadmap.

About the Role

• Own the technical foundation of the websites we build
• Architect, develop, and optimize custom builds for SEO, performance, and scalability
• Work closely with SEO, Content, and Digital PR teams to ensure strong technical execution
• Build systems that are clean, scalable, and maintainable
• Focus on engineering quality over page builders or pre-built themes
  
  

Key Responsibilities

Web Development (Core Role)

• Architect and build fully custom WordPress websites (themes, plugins, ACF-driven structures)
• Engineer sites for speed, scalability, and strong Core Web Vitals performance
• Handle server environments, deployments, and infrastructure decisions
• Integrate APIs and third-party systems cleanly and reliably
• Own technical SEO implementation (crawlability, indexation, structured data)
• Manage DNS, CDN (Cloudflare), SMTP, and hosting configurations
• Work across Shopify and BigCommerce at the code level when needed
• Implement accurate tracking (GA4, GTM) without compromising data integrity
• Debug issues across the full stack (server, backend, frontend performance)

Agentic AI Workflows (Junior/Growth Role)

• Assist in constructing multi-step, dynamic agentic workflows utilizing the PTMRO framework (Planning, Tools, Memory, Reflection, Orchestration).
• Help connect AI agents to practical tools by writing scripts and utilizing web hooks to link LLMs with marketing APIs (Google Ads, Meta Graph API, analytics dashboards).
• Build and test simple evaluation loops, helping prompt engineering and agent behaviors self-correct or flag errors before output generation.
• Run experiments to optimize LLM token usage, latency, and agent reasoning structures for internal agency automation.

What We’re Looking For

Web Development Requirements (Mid-to-Senior)

• 5+ years of web development experience in agency or performance-driven environments
• Deep expertise in PHP (including WordPress core-level development)
• Strong JavaScript experience with modern frameworks and tooling
• Working knowledge of Python (automation, scraping, tooling)
• Proven experience building custom WordPress websites from scratch
• Strong understanding of technical SEO and its impact on architecture and performance
• Ability to diagnose and solve full-stack issues independently
  

AI & Automation Requirements (Junior / Entry-Level)

• Foundational AI Knowledge: A massive passion for AI agents and basic conceptual understanding of how LLMs process data, handle memory, and leverage external tools.
• Framework Exposure: Foundational exposure to or an eager willingness to learn agentic architectures like LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen, or Semantic Kernel (personal projects or bootcamps count!).
• Python Skills: Solid script-writing capabilities in Python to handle data manipulation and API calls.

What Sets You Apart

• You think in systems, not pages
• Experience working on large-scale or SEO-heavy websites
• Strong understanding of crawlability, indexation, and internal linking at scale
• Experience with schema and structured data implementation
• Exposure to programmatic SEO or dynamic page generation
• Experience handling real-world constraints (traffic spikes, broken deployments, legacy rebuilds)
  
  

Strong Advantages

• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and Git workflows
• Familiarity with Docker or modern dev environments
• Experience with log analysis and advanced debugging
• Security hardening and site recovery experience
• Experience with multi-site or multi-location SEO builds
  
  

What We Don’t Want

• Heavy reliance on page builders
• Plugin-first approaches to performance and SEO
• Developers who need constant direction or step-by-step instructions
  
  

Why Join Us?

• High ownership with real technical decision-making
• Clean builds with no unnecessary bloat
• Direct collaboration with SEO, Content, and Digital PR specialists
• A team that values performance, scalability, and engineering quality
• Competitive salary and performance-based incentives
• Flexible remote work from day one
• 2 weeks Paid Time-Off
• Paid Sick Leave
• 8 Paid Holidays
• Health Insurance
  
  

Ready to Apply?

• Submit your resume
• Include a portfolio with examples of custom builds
• Add a short note on how you approach building high-performance websites