Software Engineer, Backend

What You’ll Do

• Own the architecture of Mercor's shared backend systems—core services, data models, APIs, and cross-product infrastructure.
• Define and drive the long-term technical strategy for backend architecture across the organization.
• Design systems for scale, reliability, and evolvability, and lead the highest-stakes technical decisions and design reviews.
• Identify and pay down architectural debt that slows product teams, and lead complex cross-team migrations.
• Establish backend engineering standards, patterns, and best practices adopted across all product teams.
• Stay hands-on: prototype critical systems, ship production code, and unblock teams on their hardest technical problems.
• Mentor senior engineers and raise the technical bar across the engineering organization.
• Partner with engineering and product leadership on build-vs-buy decisions, platform investments, and technical hiring.

What We’re Looking For

• 8+ years of professional backend engineering experience, including 3+ years operating at a Senior level or above.
• Deep expertise in distributed systems, service architecture, data modeling, and API design at scale.
• A track record of owning architecture across multiple teams or an entire organization—and of decisions that aged well.
• Experience leading large, complex technical migrations in production without stopping the business.
• Strong opinions, loosely held: you drive alignment through technical judgment and clear writing, not authority.
• Fluent in using modern AI development tools (e.g. Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or similar) to improve engineering productivity.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and raising the technical bar across an organization.
• Excellent communication skills—able to make complex tradeoffs legible to both engineers and leadership.
• High ownership, pragmatism, and a bias toward shipping.

Benefits

• Bi-annual performance bonus structure
• Generous equity grant vested over 4 years
• Up to $15k Relocation bonus
• $10K housing 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