Software Engineer, Backend
At a glance
Mid-level Backend Engineering role at Mercor. San Francisco · full-time · $200,000–$500,000 base.
techroles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Set the architecture for shared backend services, data models, APIs, and infrastructure used across talent products
- Guide backend strategy across teams, making design choices for systems that need to scale, stay reliable, and evolve
- Lead consequential design reviews and production migrations while addressing architecture that is slowing product teams
- Write and ship code, prototype key systems, and help teams resolve their hardest backend problems
- Set engineering patterns, mentor senior engineers, and advise leadership on platform investments and technical hiring
What you bring
- At least eight years of backend engineering work, including three or more years at senior level or higher
- Strong experience with distributed systems, service design, data modeling, and APIs built to scale
- A record of shaping architecture across multiple teams or an organization, with decisions that held up over time
- Experience delivering complex production migrations while keeping business operations running
- Fluency with modern AI coding tools, plus experience mentoring senior engineers and communicating technical tradeoffs clearly
Who this fits
This is a hands-on technical leadership role for an experienced backend engineer; it does not manage people. The role is based in San Francisco and requires working in person five days a week.
From the employer
About Mercor
Mercor's mission is to organize human intelligence to power the AI economy. We're a leading AI data company, building the layer between human expertise and frontier models. Millions of domain experts on the platform are paid over $4 million per day to train frontier AI models. Mercor's APEX benchmark family measures AI's real-world impact on professional work. Mercor Enterprise brings this same infrastructure to Fortune 500 companies: helping companies capture how their best people actually work, translating that expertise directly back into agents.
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 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 new San Francisco headquarters.
About the Role
As a Member of Technical Staff of talent experience, you'll own the shared backend architecture that underpins every user journey for talent network at Mercor.
Mercor's products—talent matching, assessment, expert workflows—are growing faster than any single team can architect for. You'll define the technical direction of the systems they all depend on: core services, data models, APIs, and infrastructure patterns that must scale with a network of tens of thousands of experts and the demands of the world's leading AI labs. You'll set the standards that dozens of engineers build on, pay down the architectural decisions that no longer fit, and make the ones that will still be right three years from now.
This is a hands-on technical leadership role, not a management role. You'll write code, review the designs that matter most, and act as the connective tissue between product teams—partnering directly with engineering leadership to shape how the organization builds.
What You’ll Do
Own the architecture of Mercor's shared backend systems—core services, data models, APIs, and cross-product infrastructure.
Define and drive the long-term technical strategy for backend architecture across the organization.
Design systems for scale, reliability, and evolvability, and lead the highest-stakes technical decisions and design reviews.
Identify and pay down architectural debt that slows product teams, and lead complex cross-team migrations.
Establish backend engineering standards, patterns, and best practices adopted across all product teams.
Stay hands-on: prototype critical systems, ship production code, and unblock teams on their hardest technical problems.
Mentor senior engineers and raise the technical bar across the engineering organization.
Partner with engineering and product leadership on build-vs-buy decisions, platform investments, and technical hiring.
What We’re Looking For
8+ years of professional backend engineering experience, including 3+ years operating at a Senior level or above.
Deep expertise in distributed systems, service architecture, data modeling, and API design at scale.
A track record of owning architecture across multiple teams or an entire organization—and of decisions that aged well.
Experience leading large, complex technical migrations in production without stopping the business.
Strong opinions, loosely held: you drive alignment through technical judgment and clear writing, not authority.
Fluent in using modern AI development tools (e.g. Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or similar) to improve engineering productivity.
Experience mentoring senior engineers and raising the technical bar across an organization.
Excellent communication skills—able to make complex tradeoffs legible to both engineers and leadership.
High ownership, pragmatism, and a bias toward shipping.
Benefits
Bi-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
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