# Member of Technical Staff, Backend

**Company:** [Mercor](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/mercor)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA
**Role:** Backend Engineering
**Salary:** $250k – $500k/yr
**Experience:** 8+ years
**Skills:** backend engineering, Distributed Systems, service architecture, Data Modeling, API Design, Technical Leadership, System Design, ai development tools, Cursor, Claude Code, github copilot
**Posted:** 2026-07-25

> Member of Technical Staff owning shared backend architecture, core services, data models, APIs and infrastructure for Mercor's talent network products. Requires 8+ years backend engineering experience with deep expertise in distributed systems and a track record of organization-wide technical leadership.

## Job Description

## 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
- Generous equity grant vested over 4 years
- A $20K relocation bonus (if moving to the Bay Area)
- 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

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