Software Engineer, Backend

About Mercor

Mercor is training models that predict how well someone will perform on a job better than a human can. We use our platform to source, vet, and onboard expert contractors who help train AI models in a wide variety of domains. Our technology is so effective it’s used by all of the top 5 AI labs.

We scaled from $1–500M in revenue run rate in the last 17 months, making us the fastest growing company in the world. Our growth is accelerating: 11% week-over-week in July, 18% in August, and 19% in September. The team is small, profitable, and growing as fast as we can hire exceptional people.

About The Role

As a Software Engineer at Mercor, you’ll join a small, product-driven engineering team building modern backend systems that power critical workflows for some of the most advanced AI companies in the world. You’ll own projects end-to-end, designing, building, and shipping production systems that directly impact customers. From day one you’ll write production-grade code, reason about systems holistically, and make decisions that tie directly to business outcomes. You’ll work closely with product and design, moving fast while upholding a high bar for code quality, scalability, and simplicity.

At The End Of The Process, You’ll Be Team-matched To Where You Can Have The Most Impact, On One Of The Following

• Talent platform side – building next-generation tools that automate recruiting end-to-end, intelligently match candidates to roles, and power global hiring with seamless contracts and payments.
• Applied AI/human data side – partnering with top AI researchers from the AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google to create post training datasets to improve foundational model capabilities.
  
  

What You’ll Do

• Design and build scalable backend APIs, services, and infrastructure.
• Collaborate across the stack with product and design to ship features quickly.
• Write clean, maintainable code and contribute to documentation.
• Participate in code reviews, technical design discussions, and retros.
• Solve real-world customer problems under real-world constraints.
• Contribute to core systems that power training, evaluation, and scaling for leading AI labs.
  
  

What We’re Looking For

• Strong coding fundamentals in at least one modern language (Python, Go, Rust, etc.).
• Understanding of data structures, algorithms, and distributed systems.
• Familiarity with APIs, SQL/NoSQL databases, and cloud platforms (AWS/GCP).
• Bias toward ownership, curiosity, and asking the right questions.
• Ability to break down ambiguity and ship simple solutions to complex problems.
  
  

Why Mercor

• Impact: Your work powers how the world’s leading AI labs train and test their models.
• Learning: Get early insights into frontier model capabilities months before the market.
• Growth: Work on both infrastructure and research-adjacent projects with fast paths to ownership.
  
  

Benefits

• Generous equity grant vested over 4 years
• A $20K relocation bonus (if moving to the Bay Area)
• A $10K housing bonus (if you live within 0.5 miles of our office)
• A $1K monthly stipend for meals
• Free Equinox membership
• Health insurance
  
  

Compensation Range: $130K - $500K