Software Engineer: Build AI-Driven Hiring Platform

MeritFirst; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

MeritFirst, Austin-based, builds infrastructure to hire by demonstrated ability rather than pedigree. We’re seeking Software Engineers to shape the MeritFirst platform—from candidate experiences to employer workflows and evaluation systems.

You’ll own high-leverage problems, ship early, observe real-world results, and iterate. You’ll work with our founder and product team to scale the system and apply AI where it meaningfully improves assessments and outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Build the core product: Create candidate and employer experiences that make it easy to demonstrate ability.
• Build a flexible assessment platform: Develop the primitives that allow us to create, deliver, evaluate, and continuously improve rigorous assessments and realistic work challenges across many kinds of roles.
• Own problems end to end: Move from understanding the user and shaping the product through system design, implementation, deployment, observation, and iteration.
• Turn difficult human workflows into excellent software: Work closely with assessment experts, operators, and users to understand what should be automated, what should remain human, and how the two should fit together.
• Build evaluation systems worthy of trust: Make results consistent, interpretable, auditable, and resistant to gaming. Design appropriate human review, testing, and safeguards into systems that affect real careers.
• Close the learning loop: Connect assessment performance, employer decisions, and on-the-job outcomes so the product becomes more useful and predictive over time.
• Use AI where it earns its place: Apply models where they materially improve assessment creation, evaluation, or the candidate and employer experience - and build the evaluations and guardrails required to know whether they are actually working.
• Make trust a technical requirement: Treat reliability, security, privacy, accessibility, and candidate experience as foundational product properties rather than cleanup work.
• Strengthen the technical foundation: Improve architecture, testing, observability, performance, and developer velocity where the business requires it - without prematurely building infrastructure we do not yet need.
• Set the engineering standard: Establish the technical judgment, operating habits, and quality bar that future engineers will inherit. Help us identify and recruit the people who should join you.

Job description

MeritFirst, Austin-based, builds infrastructure to hire by demonstrated ability rather than pedigree. We’re seeking Software Engineers to shape the MeritFirst platform—from candidate experiences to employer workflows and evaluation systems.

You’ll own high-leverage problems, ship early, observe real-world results, and iterate. You’ll work with our founder and product team to scale the system and apply AI where it meaningfully improves assessments and outcomes.