Founding Software Engineer (Simulation)

Mercator; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Company retreat

Job summary

Mercator in San Francisco is seeking its first product engineer to architect and build the core systems powering a simulation-driven product. You’ll talk to customers to understand workflows, translate them into system design, and own the backend logic that turns complex scenarios into clear, actionable outcomes.

You’ll also partner closely with the engineer building our web app to ship end-to-end features, validate with customers, and iterate quickly to improve reliability and user experience.

Job description

Company Description

Mercator is building AI agents that coordinate global supply chains. Today’s systems leak $1.7T in waste each year in retail alone - in overproduction, lost revenue, and unnecessary emissions.

Mercator’s founders are seasoned technical operators with a decade of experience leading cutting-edge AI and simulation efforts across Google (Gemini, Tensorflow, & Google X). We recently raised $5M in seed funding from leading Silicon Valley investors and are scaling our small, elite engineering team to meet growing customer demand.

Role Description

As Mercator’s first product engineer, you’ll architect and build the core systems that power our simulation-driven product experience. You’ll work directly with customers to understand how they operate, translate real workflows into system design, and own the backend logic that turns complex scenarios into clear, actionable outcomes. You’ll also partner closely with the engineer building our web app to ship end-to-end features and ensure simulation outputs translate into intuitive product experiences.

Like every early engineer, you’ll wear many hats:

• Talk to customers to understand their workflows, pain points, and desired outcomes




• Design product and system architecture for new simulation-powered features




• Implement backend logic: state transitions, modeling, APIs, orchestration




• Collaborate on user-facing behavior, flows, and UX with the application engineer




• Ship fast, validate with customers, and iterate even faster




• Debug issues (sometimes with a quick patch, sometimes improving system reliability)

These features are built on top of a simulation engine that models complex, real-world operations; what you build will directly shape high-stakes decisions and outcomes.

Benefits

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance




• As a company we’ll work from a fun destination (think: skiing, surfing) two weeks a year

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Applicants must have valid U.S. work authorization. We are able to support H-1B transfers but are not initiating new visa sponsorships at this time.