Software Engineer, Identity

Posted Yesterday
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San Francisco, CA, USA
In-Office
150K-325K Annually
Mid level
Artificial Intelligence • Software
We use AI to understand human ability and match talent with the opportunities they're best suited for.
The Role
Design, build, and operate identity and access infrastructure at massive scale. Work directly with operations to translate requirements into secure, distributed systems covering authentication, authorization, provisioning, and directory synchronization across thousands of Slack workspaces and HR systems. Own features end-to-end and iterate on design with security-first thinking.
Summary Generated by Built In
About Mercor

Mercor's mission is to organize human intelligence to power the AI economy. 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 $3 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.

Why This Role

Mercor's identity infrastructure is unlike anything else in the Valley. Our enterprise Slack alone spans thousands of workspaces and tens of thousands of channels — with over 63,000 users today, the vast majority of whom are contractors and experts, not employees. That number is on track to hit 100,000. Managing access, identity, and permissions at that scale, across a global expert network spanning every client project we run, is one of the hardest distributed systems problems we have.

This team is led by Mercor's first engineer. It operates with a high degree of ownership: you'll take requirements directly from operations, design the system, and ship it. There's no one handing you a spec. The problems are novel, the scale is real, and the team has a strong track record of bringing in sharp product engineers — regardless of prior security background — and watching them thrive.

What You'll Do

  • Talk directly with ops teams to understand business requirements, then translate them into large-scale distributed systems that are designed with security in mind from the start

  • Build and scale the infrastructure that manages expert identity and access across thousands of Slack workspaces, enterprise groups, and HR systems — systems that already operate at a scale most engineers never encounter

  • Own your scope end to end: define the approach, build it, and iterate on it as requirements evolve

  • Design for the security implications of what you're building — not auditing after the fact, but thinking through how gaps in system design compound at scale

  • Work across authentication, authorization, provisioning, and directory sync as the expert network continues to grow

What We're Looking For

  • Strong product engineering fundamentals — you've built and operated systems in production, you care about correctness and reliability, and you're comfortable owning scope without a lot of hand-holding

  • Large-scale distributed systems experience — this is the most identifiable signal on a resume and a strong filter; the problems here are genuinely unprecedented in scale

  • Security-minded thinking — not a formal background necessarily, but the instinct to ask "how does this break, and what are the consequences?" when designing a system

  • Adaptability — we don't want someone who will come in and replicate what they've done before; Mercor's landscape is unique and requires genuine intellectual flexibility

Benefits

  • Generous equity, vested over 4 years

  • Up to $15K relocation bonus

  • $10K housing bonus (if you live within 0.5 miles of the office)

  • $1,500/month meals stipend

  • Free Equinox membership

  • $200/month laundry reimbursement

  • $200/month personal wellness reimbursement

  • Health, Dental, and Vision insurance

Skills Required

  • Built and operated systems in production (strong product engineering fundamentals)
  • Large-scale distributed systems experience
  • Security-minded thinking when designing systems (authentication and authorization focus)
  • Experience across authentication, authorization, provisioning, and directory sync
  • Experience integrating or managing access across Slack at enterprise scale
  • Ability to own scope end-to-end and iterate without detailed specs
  • Adaptability and intellectual flexibility to handle novel problems
  • Willingness to work in-person five days a week in San Francisco, New York City, or London offices

Mercor Compensation & Benefits Highlights

The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Mercor and has not been reviewed or approved by Mercor.

  • Fair & Transparent Compensation Pay is considered competitive across many roles, with clear hourly ranges and an hourly/pay‑per‑task mix designed to align rates with expertise. The structure emphasizes transparent, appropriate pay levels and guarantees payment for legitimate logged time.
  • Strong & Reliable Incentives Payments are processed on a predictable weekly cadence via Stripe/Wise, and some tracks offer additional weekly bonus incentives for top performers. This combination of regular payouts and performance bonuses supports dependable earnings when projects are active.
  • Equity Value & Accessibility Select full‑time roles include generous equity grants alongside cash perks such as relocation and housing bonuses. These elements increase total compensation for those positions.

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The Company
HQ: San Francisco, California
2,217 Employees
Year Founded: 2023

What We Do

We use AI to understand human ability and match talent with the opportunities they're best suited for.

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