Backend Software Engineer - Fully Remote

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

• Software Engineer
• Type: Contract
• Compensation: $100--$160/hour
• Commitment: 30--40 hours/week

Role Responsibilities

• Design, build, and optimize distributed infrastructure for training, deploying, and scaling AI agents across high-performance compute environments.
• Develop core backend systems including services, APIs, and orchestration layers to support agent lifecycles, tool execution, and multi-agent coordination.
• Collaborate closely with research and applied AI teams to integrate model-serving pipelines, agent reasoning loops, and planning components into production systems.
• Build and maintain agent runtime infrastructure with task scheduling, state management, and inter-agent communication.
• Implement monitoring, observability, and fault-tolerance mechanisms for long-running agent processes and distributed workflows.
• Evaluate and improve system performance across compute, networking, storage, and inference layers, resolving bottlenecks.

Qualifications

Must-Have

• Strong foundation in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or Systems Design with experience in large-scale distributed systems.
• Proficiency in backend or systems programming languages such as Go, Rust, Python, C++, Java, Scala, C#, Kotlin, or TypeScript/JavaScript.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and containerization/orchestration tools like Docker and Kubernetes.
• Strong experience designing production-grade backend services, APIs, and distributed systems.
• Knowledge of networking, data streaming, caching, and performance optimization in distributed systems.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills.
• Ability to commit 30-40 hours per week, including required synchronous collaboration sessions.

Preferred

• Familiarity with LLM inference pipelines, agent frameworks, multi-agent architectures, or reinforcement learning environments.

Application Process (Takes 20--30 mins to complete)

1. Upload resume
2. AI interview based on your resume
3. Submit form

Resources & Support

• For details about the interview process and platform information, please check: https://talent.docs.mercor.com/welcome/welcome
• For any help or support, reach out to: support@mercor.com

PS: Our team reviews applications daily. Please complete your AI interview and application steps to be considered for this opportunity.