Software Engineer, Applied AI

Department: Engineering

Location: San Francisco

Compensation: $130K – $500K • Offers Equity

Employment Type: FullTime

About Mercor

Mercor is defining the future of work. 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 $2 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 San Francisco, NYC, or London offices.

About the Role

As a Software Engineer on Applied AI, you’ll build, deploy, and operate systems that sit directly between frontier AI research and data delivery.

This is a high-ownership, deeply technical role. You’ll work through ill-defined problems, prototype quickly with researchers and customers, and take systems from early experiments to reliable, scalable production. You’ll own projects end-to-end: spanning requirements gathering, creating data creation pipelines, and improving model-adjacent infrastructure, while partnering closely with frontier AI labs and Mercor’s internal teams to ship high-impact applied AI solutions.

What You’ll Do

• Partner closely with frontier AI labs to understand their data, post-training, and evaluation needs

• Build and operate scalable data pipelines for post-training workflows and model evaluations

• Design and build scalable systems for synthetic data generation and data quality, and work directly with customers to understand requirements and develop technical solutions

• Prototype new data types, benchmarks, and evaluation frameworks

• Lead technical discussions with customers

What Makes This Role Different

• Direct frontier exposure. You’ll work closely with researchers at leading AI labs, building infrastructure that directly accelerates cutting-edge research.

• Coding + customer work. This role blends deep technical execution with customer interaction. Engineers who enjoy both building and communicating tend to thrive.

Day-to-Day

• Fast-moving, high-ownership environment

• Technically demanding, collaborative work

• “Building the plane while flying it”

• In-person culture (SF, 181 Fremont)

• Aligned with frontier research timelines

What We’re Looking For

• Strong backend engineering fundamentals in a modern language (Python, Go, Rust, etc.)

• Experience with model training and inference

• Strong grounding in statistical analysis and experimental design for measuring model performance and improvements

• Familiarity with evaluation methods for large language models

• Comfort working through ambiguity and shipping iteratively

You’re likely someone who:

• Enjoys ownership and customer-facing problem solving

• Thinks entrepreneurially and moves quickly

• Balances speed with engineering rigor

• Communicates clearly with technical and non-technical users

Why Engineers Join

• Direct exposure to frontier AI research

• Real ownership and visible impact

• Technical depth paired with human interaction

• Fast feedback loops and high leverage

• There are very few roles that combine this level of technical rigor, customer proximity, and research exposure.

Benefits

• Generous equity (4-year vest)

• $20K relocation bonus

• $10K housing bonus (within 0.5 miles)

• $1K monthly meal stipend

• Free Equinox membership

• Health insurance