Software Engineer, Applied AI - Frontier Engineering (NYC)

About the Role

On the Software Engineer, Applied AI - Frontier Engineering team , you’ll build, deploy, and operate systems that sit directly between frontier AI research and data delivery.

This is a high-ownership, deeply technical role. You’ll work through ill-defined problems, prototype quickly with researchers and customers, and take systems from early experiments to reliable, scalable production. You’ll own projects end-to-end: spanning requirements gathering, creating data creation pipelines, and improving model-adjacent infrastructure, while partnering closely with frontier AI labs and Mercor’s internal teams to ship high-impact applied AI solutions.

What You’ll Do

• Partner closely with frontier AI labs to understand their data, post-training, and evaluation needs

• Build and operate scalable data pipelines for post-training workflows and model evaluations

• Design and build scalable systems for synthetic data generation and data quality, and work directly with customers to understand requirements and develop technical solutions

• Prototype new data types, benchmarks, and evaluation frameworks

• Lead technical discussions with customers

What Makes This Role Different

• Direct frontier exposure. You’ll work closely with researchers at leading AI labs, building infrastructure that directly accelerates cutting-edge research.

• Coding + customer work. This role blends deep technical execution with customer interaction. Engineers who enjoy both building and communicating tend to thrive.

Day-to-Day

• Fast-moving, high-ownership environment

• Technically demanding, collaborative work

• “Building the plane while flying it”

• In-person culture at our new New York office at One World Trade Center

• Aligned with frontier research timelines

What We’re Looking For

• Strong backend engineering fundamentals in a modern language (Python, Go, Rust, etc.)

• Experience with model training and inference

• Strong grounding in statistical analysis and experimental design for measuring model performance and improvements

• Familiarity with evaluation methods for large language models

• Comfort working through ambiguity and shipping iteratively

Benefits

• Bi-annual performance bonus structure

• Generous equity grant vested over 4 years

• Up to $15k Relocation bonus

• $10K proximity bonus (if you live within 0.5 miles of our office)

• $1.5K monthly stipend for meals

• Free Equinox membership

• $200 monthly laundry reimbursement

• $200 monthly personal wellness reimbursement

• Health, Dental, Vision insurance