Backend Engineer (Coding Agent) at Mercor

Backend Engineer – AI Coding Agent Evaluator | $85/hr | Worldwide Remote

Mercor is partnering with a leading AI research lab on a Frontier Code Agents project. In this role, you'll use and evaluate cutting-edge AI coding agents to assess and improve frontier AI models through structured technical assessments. This is sprint-based contract work — not traditional software development — focused on realistic engineering workflows and model evaluation.

Spots are limited and filling quickly on a first-come, first-served basis.

What You'll Do

• 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 AI model outputs.
• Compare outputs from multiple frontier models and assess their strengths and weaknesses.
• Apply professional engineering judgment to realistic backend engineering scenarios.

Compensation & Time Commitment

• $400 per accepted task — typical tasks take 1–3 hours after ramp-up.
• No fixed task limits; compensation is tied to accepted work.
• Sprint-based project running in 12–24 hour stretches based on client requirements.

Who Should Apply

• 2+ years of professional backend engineering experience.
• Hands-on experience with 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 critically evaluate model-generated code and identify bugs, edge cases, and architectural tradeoffs.
• Experience with large-scale production systems is a strong plus.