Senior Python Engineer - AI Coding Agent Evaluation (Freelance)

Mindrift; Town of Texas (WI); On-site; USD 165,312 - 275,520; Full time

Job summary

Mindrift connects specialists with project-based AI opportunities for leading tech companies, focused on testing, evaluating, and improving AI systems. Participation is project-based, not permanent employment.

This opportunity involves building a dataset to evaluate AI coding agents and how well a model handles real-world developer tasks. Join us to design tasks, write tests, and iterate on evaluation robustness, ensuring fair outcomes.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in software development.
• Experience writing tests (functional, integration).
• Core stack: Python (FastAPI), JavaScript/TypeScript (React), Docker, Postgres, Kafka, Redis.
• English proficiency - B2+.

Responsibilities

• Build realistic developer environments (virtual company with codebase, infra, tickets, docs).
• Design tasks from intermediate states and define what "solved" means.
• Write tests that verify agent solutions (accept all valid, reject incorrect).
• Iterate on tasks/tests based on QA feedback to ensure fairness and robustness.

Skills

English proficiency

Task design & evaluation

Software development experience

Tools

Python

JavaScript/TypeScript

Docker

Postgres

Kafka

Redis

Job description

Overview

Mindrift connects specialists with project-based AI opportunities for leading tech companies, focused on testing, evaluating, and improving AI systems. Participation is project-based, not permanent employment. This opportunity involves building a dataset to evaluate AI coding agents and how well a model handles real-world developer tasks.

Responsibilities

• Build realistic developer environments: a virtual company with a codebase, infrastructure, and context (tickets, docs, conversations) that forms a believable development history
• Design tasks from intermediate states of these environments: craft the prompt, define what "solved" means, and ensure the task is solvable by an AI agent
• Write tests that verify agent solutions: accept all valid approaches and reject incorrect ones, neither too strict nor too lenient
• Iterate on tasks and tests based on QA feedback: review agent solutions, analyze failures, and refine until the evaluation is fair and robust

What this is NOT

• Not data labeling
• Not prompt engineering
• Not writing code from scratch - the agent writes most of the code; you guide and evaluate

What we look for

• 8+ years in software development
• Core stack: Python (FastAPI), JavaScript/TypeScript (React), Docker, Postgres, Kafka, Redis
• Experience writing tests (functional, integration)
• English proficiency - B2+

Why this is hard

Frontier models are already good at coding. Creating a task that genuinely challenges the best models is non-trivial. You need to deeply understand where models fail and what scenarios reveal the difference between a good and a bad solution. Tasks have many valid solutions - writing tests that accept all correct solutions and reject incorrect ones is harder than it sounds.

How it works

Apply → Pass qualification(s) → Join a project → Complete tasks → Get paid. Effort estimate

Timeline & Expectations

Tasks for this project are estimated to take 30 hours to complete, depending on complexity. This is an estimate and not a schedule requirement; you choose when and how to work. Tasks must be submitted by the deadline and meet the listed acceptance criteria to be accepted.

Compensation

Up to $200/hr equivalent, depending on level and pace. Tasks are estimated at ~30 hours each; you set your own schedule.