Software Engineer - Fully Remote

About the job

Mercor connects elite creative and technical talent with leading AI research labs. Headquartered in San Francisco, our investors include Benchmark , General Catalyst , Peter Thiel , Adam D'Angelo , Larry Summers , and Jack Dorsey .

Position: Software Engineer, Python — Codebase Q&A

Type: Contract

Compensation: $130 per approved task

Location: Remote

Role Responsibilities

• Select tasks from a pre-validated pool of Python repositories, each pinned to a specific git commit and arriving with an engineering question, positive and negative rubrics, foils, and a golden solution.
• Explore the repository until you genuinely understand the subsystem in question, including the relevant PR or issue history.
• Rewrite the task's question so it defeats frontier coding agents while remaining well-defined and fairly answerable.
• Adjust rubrics and foils so they reward correct reasoning and reject plausible-but-wrong answers.
• Run the full validation loop in Studio — Check, Golden, Run, Analyze — and iterate until every stage passes.
• Document your work in the task README and submit for expert review, addressing reviewer feedback on returned tasks.

Qualifications

Must-Have

• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience, with substantial production Python .
• Demonstrated ability to navigate a large, unfamiliar Python codebase and explain how it behaves at runtime.
• Fluency in Python internals that matter in real systems: import machinery, descriptors and metaclasses, async and event loops, packaging, and C-extension boundaries.
• Precise written English: the questions and rubrics you write are the product.
• Comfortable with git at commit level, containerized environments, and command-line tooling.

Preferred

• Experience with web frameworks, developer tooling, type checkers, or scientific/numeric libraries is highly relevant.

Compensation & Legal

• Payment is per approved task; every task is reviewed by a second engineer and a super reviewer before acceptance.

Application Process (Takes 20–30 mins to complete)

• Submit your resume or relevant technical background to get started.
• Qualified applicants may be asked to complete a brief technical assessment or provide additional information.

Resources & Support

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PS: Our team reviews applications daily. Please complete your AI interview and application steps to be considered for this opportunity.