Applied AI Engineer - Data Pipelines for Frontier Models

Fdetimes; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bi-annual performance bonus structure

Generous equity grant vested over 4 y

Up to $15k Relocation bonus

$10K proximity bonus (0.5 miles of SF)

$1.5K monthly meals stipend

Free Equinox membership

$200 monthly laundry reimbursement

$200 monthly personal wellness Reimb.

Health, Dental, Vision insurance

Job summary

Mercor is seeking a Software Engineer on Applied AI in San Francisco to build, deploy, and operate systems bridging frontier AI research and data delivery. You’ll own projects end-to-end, from requirements gathering to production, collaborating with researchers and Mercor’s internal teams.

The role emphasizes deep technical execution and customer interaction, with direct exposure to frontier AI labs, and a culture of rapid iteration in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• Strong backend engineering fundamentals in a modern language (Python, Go, Rust, etc.)
• Experience with model training and inference
• Strong grounding in statistical analysis and experimental design for measuring model performance and improvements
• Familiarity with evaluation methods for large language models
• Comfort working through ambiguity and shipping iteratively

Responsibilities

• Partner closely with frontier AI labs to understand their data, post-training, and evaluation needs
• Build and operate scalable data pipelines for post-training workflows and model evaluations
• Design and build scalable systems for synthetic data generation and data quality, and work directly with customers to understand requirements and develop technical solutions
• Prototype new data types, benchmarks, and evaluation frameworks
• Lead technical discussions with customers

Skills

Backend engineering

Python

Go

Rust

Model training

Inference

Statistical analysis

Experiment design

LLMs evaluation

Customer facing

Job description

Mercor is seeking a Software Engineer on Applied AI in San Francisco to build, deploy, and operate systems bridging frontier AI research and data delivery. You’ll own projects end-to-end, from requirements gathering to production, collaborating with researchers and Mercor’s internal teams.

The role emphasizes deep technical execution and customer interaction, with direct exposure to frontier AI labs, and a culture of rapid iteration in a fast-paced environment.