Scala Engineer

SME Careers; Malaysia; Remote; MYR 83,000 - 152,000; Full time

Job summary

SME Careers is seeking an experienced Scala Engineer to work remotely on an hourly basis. You will review AI-generated Scala code, system designs, and explanations, delivering high-quality reference implementations and step-by-step reasoning for complex problems.

You will assess solutions for correctness, safety, performance, and prompt adherence, and you will rate AI responses while identifying concurrency and JVM-related issues in distributed systems.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field.
• 4+ years building production systems using Scala.
• Expert-level proficiency in Scala 2.13+ and/or Scala 3.
• Strong JVM fundamentals and performance tuning.
• Experience with concurrency and effect systems (cats-effect, ZIO) or actor-based systems (Akka/Pekko).
• Experience designing services in distributed environments (microservices, messaging/streaming).
• Strong testing practices (ScalaTest, MUnit, ScalaCheck) and CI/CD familiarity.
• Build tooling and dependency management (sbt, Maven/Gradle interop).
• Proficiency in English (C1) written and spoken.

Responsibilities

• Review AI-generated Scala code, system designs, and explanations for correctness and clarity.
• Produce high-quality reference implementations and step-by-step reasoning for complex problems.
• Rate and compare AI responses based on correctness and reasoning quality.
• Identify concurrency, JVM perf, and resource handling issues and propose fixes.

Skills

Scala 2.13+/3

Back-end Scala

JVM fundamentals

Concurrency/Effect systems

Testing (ScalaTest)

CI/CD

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related

Tools

sbt

Maven/Gradle interop

Docker

Job description

As a Scala Engineer, you will work remotely on an hourly paid basis to review AI-generated Scala code, system designs, and technical explanations, as well as produce high-quality reference implementations and step-by-step reasoning for complex engineering problems. You will assess solutions for correctness, clarity, safety, performance, and adherence to the prompt; identify errors in concurrency, distributed systems behavior, JVM performance, functional correctness, and resource handling; fact-check technical information; write high-quality explanations and model solutions that demonstrate correct methods; and rate and compare multiple AI responses based on correctness and reasoning quality.

This fully remote, hourly paid contractor role is with SME Careers, a fast-growing AI data services company and subsidiary of SuperAnnotate that provides AI training data to many of the world's largest AI companies and foundation model labs - where your Scala and systems expertise will directly help improve the world's premier AI models used by millions of developers worldwide.

Important

There is no immediate project for this role; however, if qualified, you will be among the first experts we reach out to when relevant opportunities arise. This will also provide you with access to future projects available through our expert network.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop AI Training Content: Create detailed prompts across Scala/JVM topics and write high-quality reference answers to guide AI learning.
• Optimize AI Performance: Evaluate and rank AI responses to improve correctness, safety, performance, and contextual relevance.
• Ensure Model Integrity: Test AI outputs for inaccuracies, unsafe patterns, and bias; validate reliability across real-world use cases.

Your Profile

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a closely related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).
• 4+ years of professional experience building production systems using Scala (backend services, data platforms, or distributed systems).
• Expert-level proficiency in Scala 2.13+ and/or Scala 3, including strong understanding of the type system, implicits/givens, collections, and functional patterns.
• Strong JVM fundamentals: memory model, garbage collection, profiling, performance tuning, and troubleshooting production issues.
• Deep experience with concurrency and effect systems (e.g., cats-effect, ZIO) and/or actor-based systems (Akka/Pekko).
• Experience designing and operating services in distributed environments: microservices, messaging/streaming, retries, idempotency, backpressure, consistency tradeoffs.
• Strong testing practices (ScalaTest, MUnit, property-based testing like ScalaCheck) and comfort with CI/CD workflows.
• Comfortable with build tooling and dependency management (sbt, Maven/Gradle interop), and version control best practices.
• Minimum C1 English proficiency (written and spoken), with the ability to write clear technical explanations and follow detailed English-language guidelines.
• Prior experience with AI data training, annotation, or evaluating AI-generated technical content is a strong plus.
• Highly detail-oriented and systematic, with a methodical approach to evaluating reasoning quality and identifying subtle issues in Scala/JVM systems.