Surety Expert - Fully Remote

Mercor; New York (NY); Remote; USD 964,000 - 1,240,000; Full time

Job summary

Mercor is seeking a remote Contract Surety Underwriter & Bond Specialist to design realistic bond scenarios, analyze capacity, and produce credit-based work products. The role emphasizes indemnity, collateral, and industry standards while evaluating bid and payment performance.

Ideal candidates have 2+ years in surety underwriting and can read contractor financials to derive capacity and credit conclusions.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of professional experience in surety underwriting, bond production, surety claims, or contract-surety credit analysis.
• Experience with at least one bond category (contract, commercial, court/fiduciary, license & permit, or subdivision bonds).
• Ability to read contractor financial statements and work-in-progress schedules and translate them into capacity and credit conclusions.
• Understanding of the three-party surety relationship and how indemnity, collateral, and subrogation differ from insurance loss payment.
• Excellent written reasoning, commercial and credit judgment, and high attention to detail.
• Distinguish surety credit decisions from property-casualty risk underwriting and ordinary claim adjudication.

Responsibilities

• Design realistic scenarios involving bid, performance, and payment bonds.
• Include single and aggregate capacity, WIP analysis, indemnity, collateral, and court bonds.
• Create work products such as capacity recommendations, credit analyses, bond approvals and declinations.
• Write high-quality reference responses for experienced surety professionals.
• Grade AI-generated responses against structured rubrics for credit judgment and accuracy.
• Provide written feedback to the research team to improve model behavior.

Skills

Surety underwriting

Credit analysis

Financial statements

Capacity assessment

Indemnity & collateral

Attention to detail

Education

AFSB

CPCU

ARM

CPA

Tools

AIA bond forms

Job description

About the job

Mercor connects elite creative and technical talent with leading AI research labs. Headquartered in San Francisco, our investors include Benchmark, General Catalyst, Peter Thiel, Adam D'Angelo, Larry Summers, and Jack Dorsey.

Position: Surety Underwriter & Bond Specialist
Type: Contract
Compensation: $800/hour
Location: Remote
Commitment: 20–40 hours/week

Role Responsibilities

• Design realistic scenarios involving bid, performance, and payment bonds. Include single and aggregate capacity, work-in-progress analysis, indemnity, collateral, commercial and court bonds, and bond-default resolution.
• Create work products such as capacity recommendations, credit analyses, bond approvals and declinations, obligee form reviews, indemnity requirements, and claim-resolution strategies.
• Write "golden" reference responses at experienced surety-professional quality.
• Grade AI-generated responses against structured rubrics for credit judgment, capacity reasoning, contract and bond-form accuracy, and default-resolution realism.
• Identify misread financial statements, overstated capacity, confusion between surety and insurance obligations, mishandled obligee requirements, and unrealistic default or recovery strategies.
• Provide written feedback the research team uses to improve model behavior. Participate in onboarding office hours and calibration sessions.

Qualifications

Must-Have

• 2+ years of professional experience in surety underwriting, bond production, surety claims, or contract-surety credit analysis.
• Experience with at least one bond category, such as contract surety, commercial surety, court and fiduciary bonds, license and permit bonds, or subdivision bonds.
• Ability to read contractor financial statements and work-in-progress schedules and translate them into capacity and credit conclusions.
• Understanding of the three-party surety relationship and how indemnity, collateral, and subrogation differ from insurance loss payment.
• Excellent written reasoning, commercial and credit judgment, and high attention to detail.
• Ability to distinguish surety credit decisions from property-casualty risk underwriting and ordinary claim adjudication.

Preferred

• AFSB, CPCU, ARM, CPA, or comparable designation.
• Both underwriting and surety-claims experience.
• Experience with AIA and other standard bond forms, or with public-works statutory bond requirements.
• Contractor default resolution: takeover, tender, financing, or completion-agreement experience.
• SBA bond guarantee, funds control, or small and emerging contractor program experience.

Start Date

• Immediately; applications reviewed on a rolling basis.