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.
About the RoleAs a Software Engineer on the Marketplace team, you will own the core systems that bring human intelligence to AI opportunities You'll work on search, matching, allocation, and workflow infrastructure at the heart of the marketplace, where systems deliver the world’s top experts to staff our cutting edge projects.
The problems are technically demanding and tightly coupled to business outcomes: latency, reliability, throughput, and system quality all directly affect marketplace performance.
What You'll BuildBackend services that power candidate-job matching, routing, and marketplace workflows
APIs and internal systems for search, eligibility, scoring, allocation, and fulfillment
Data models and system abstractions for a rapidly evolving labor marketplace
Infrastructure for real-time and asynchronous decisioning at high volume
Operational systems and tooling that keep product-critical workflows reliable, observable, and easy to evolve
• Build the systems that determine which candidates are eligible for which opportunities
• Design matching and allocation infrastructure that balance speed, quality, and fill rate
• Improve the performance and reliability of APIs serving marketplace decisions in real time
• Develop workflow engines for onboarding, vetting, routing, and placement
Design backend abstractions that let product and ML teams iterate quickly without degrading system quality
• Track record of building and operating reliable backend systems in production
• Strong judgment in system design, performance, reliability, and data modeling
• Comfort working on high-throughput APIs, distributed systems, and asynchronous workflows
• Ability to translate product and marketplace requirements into clean technical systems
• High engineering standards and a bias toward simple, durable abstractions
• Experience with search, recommendation, matching, scheduling, or marketplace systems
• Experience supporting ML-powered products or integrating model inference into production systems
• Familiarity with event-driven architecture, queues, caching, and observability tooling
This role sits on a core decision layer of the product. Your work will directly shape how the marketplace operates: which opportunities get filled, how quickly hiring happens, and how reliably the system scales as volume and complexity increase.
Tech StackPython, Go, Kafka, Postgres, Redis, Elasticsearch, Kubernetes, Terraform
BenefitsBi-annual performance bonus structure
Generous equity grant vested over 4 years
Up to $15k Relocation bonus
$10K housing bonus (if you live within 0.5 miles of our office)
$1.5K monthly stipend for meals
Free Equinox membership
$200 monthly laundry reimbursement
$200 monthly personal wellness reimbursement
Health, Dental, Vision insurance
Skills Required
- Track record of building and operating reliable backend systems in production
- Strong judgment in system design, performance, reliability, and data modeling
- Comfort working on high-throughput APIs, distributed systems, and asynchronous workflows
- Ability to translate product and marketplace requirements into clean technical systems
- High engineering standards and a bias toward simple, durable abstractions
- In-person work five days a week in San Francisco, NYC, or London offices
- Experience with search, recommendation, matching, scheduling, or marketplace systems
- Experience supporting ML-powered products or integrating model inference into production systems
- Familiarity with event-driven architecture, queues, caching, and observability tooling
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Mercor Insights
What We Do
We use AI to understand human ability and match talent with the opportunities they're best suited for.
