Backend Engineer - AI Coding Agent
Company: Mercor
Location: Chicago, IL (Remote)
Type: Full-time
Remote: Yes
Posted: 2026-06-17
About this role
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:
Backend Engineer (Coding Agent Experience)
Type:
Contract
Compensation:
$85/hour
Location:
Remote
Role Responsibilities
- Use frontier AI coding agents to complete and evaluate complex engineering tasks.
- Review model-generated code for correctness, quality, maintainability, and performance.
- Identify bugs, edge cases, and failure modes in model outputs.
- Compare outputs from multiple frontier models and assess their strengths and weaknesses.
- Apply professional engineering judgment to realistic backend engineering scenarios.
- Work independently and asynchronously to meet deadlines while improving AI model performance.
Qualifications
Must-Have
- 2+ years of professional backend engineering experience.
- Experience building APIs, distributed systems, microservices, backend platforms, or databases.
- Regular use of AI coding agents such as Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, Windsurf, Gemini CLI, or similar tools.
- Ability to evaluate model-generated code and identify bugs, edge cases, and architectural tradeoffs.
Preferred
- Experience working on large-scale production systems.
Compensation & Legal
- $400 per accepted task.
- Typical tasks take approximately 1–3 hours after ramp-up.
- No fixed task limits.
- Compensation is tied to accepted work.
Application Process (Takes 20–30 mins to complete)
- Upload resume
- AI interview based on your resume
- Submit form
Resources & Support
- For details about the interview process and platform information, please check: https://talent.docs.mercor.com/welcome
- For any help or support, reach out to: support@mercor.com
*PS: Our team reviews applications daily. Please c...