Applied AI Backend Tech Lead - Build Scalable Pipelines

Apply; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bi-annual bonus

Equity grant

Relocation bonus

Housing stipend

Meals stipend

Health, Dental, Vision insurance

Equinox membership

Wellness reimbursement

Job summary

Mercor is hiring a Tech Lead for the Applied AI Backend Systems to own core services, data models, APIs, and data pipelines that move work through the platform.

You will set technical direction, stay hands-on to solve the hardest parts, mentor engineers, drive design reviews, and manage infrastructure as code with Terraform while supporting production reliability and on-call responsibilities.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of backend engineering experience building and operating production systems.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers, not just juniors.
• Strong fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, concurrency, and clear code.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture of the Applied AI backend domain: core services, data models, orchestration systems, and the pipeline execution layer.
• Set the technical direction and stay hands-on to build the hardest parts.
• Lead design reviews, mentor engineers, and raise the standard for backend quality across the org.
• Provide infrastructure as code management using Terraform and manage containers/scaling at scale.
• Participate in on-call rotations and debug production incidents to improve reliability.

Skills

Backend architecture

System design

Mentoring engineers

API design

Distributed systems

Tools

Terraform

Airflow

Temporal

Dagster

Job description

Mercor is hiring a Tech Lead for the Applied AI Backend Systems to own core services, data models, APIs, and data pipelines that move work through the platform.

You will set technical direction, stay hands-on to solve the hardest parts, mentor engineers, drive design reviews, and manage infrastructure as code with Terraform while supporting production reliability and on-call responsibilities.