Software Engineer, Backend

Mercor is at the intersection of labor markets and AI research. We partner with leading AI labs and enterprises to provide the human intelligence essential to AI development.

Our vast talent network trains frontier AI models in the same way teachers teach students: by sharing knowledge, experience, and context that can't be captured in code alone. Today, more than 30,000 experts in our network collectively earn over $1.5 million a day.

Mercor is creating a new category of work where expertise powers AI advancement. Achieving this requires an ambitious, fast-paced and deeply committed team. You’ll work alongside researchers, operators, and AI companies at the forefront of shaping the systems that are redefining society.

Mercor is a profitable Series C company valued at $10 billion. We work in-person five days a week in our new San Francisco headquarters.

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