# Backend Engineer, Marketplace

**Company:** [Mercor](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/mercor)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA, New York, NY
**Role:** Backend Engineering
**Salary:** $130k – $500k/yr
**Skills:** Python, Go, Kafka, Postgres, Redis, Elasticsearch, Kubernetes, Terraform, APIs, Distributed Systems
**Posted:** 2026-04-10

> Builds backend systems for marketplace matching, search, allocation, and workflows using Python/Go. Requires experience with reliable high-throughput APIs, distributed systems, and data modeling to optimize fill rates and performance.

## Job Description

## What You’ll Build
- Backend services that power candidate-job matching, routing, and marketplace workflows
- APIs and internal systems for search, eligibility, scoring, allocation, and fulfillment
- Data models and system abstractions for a rapidly evolving labor marketplace
- Infrastructure for real-time and asynchronous decisioning at high volume
- Operational systems and tooling that keep product-critical workflows reliable, observable, and easy to evolve

## Example Problems
- Build the systems that determine which candidates are eligible for which opportunities
- Design matching and allocation infrastructure that balances speed, quality, and fill rate
- Improve the performance and reliability of APIs serving marketplace decisions in real time
- Develop workflow engines for onboarding, vetting, routing, and placement
- Design backend abstractions that let product and ML teams iterate quickly without degrading system quality

## What We’re Looking For
- Track record of building and operating reliable backend systems in production
- Strong judgment in system design, performance, reliability, and data modeling
- Comfort working on high-throughput APIs, distributed systems, and asynchronous workflows
- Ability to translate product and marketplace requirements into clean technical systems
- High engineering standards and a bias toward simple, durable abstractions

## Nice to Have
- Experience with search, recommendation, matching, scheduling, or marketplace systems
- Experience supporting ML-powered products or integrating model inference into production systems
- Familiarity with event-driven architecture, queues, caching, and observability tooling

## Tech Stack
**Python, Go, Kafka, Postgres, Redis, Elasticsearch, Kubernetes, Terraform**

## Benefits
- Generous equity grant vested over 4 years
- A $10K housing bonus (if you live within 0.5 miles of our office)
- A $1.5K monthly stipend for meals
- Free Equinox membership
- Health insurance

## Similar roles

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**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/034a6863-8610-4c63-8979-67ed83949a9c
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/034a6863-8610-4c63-8979-67ed83949a9c