Backend Systems & DevOps Engineer at Mercor

Backend Systems & DevOps Engineer

Job Type: Hourly Contract (Remote)

Compensation: $14–$21 per hour (USD), depending on experience

Location: Remote

About Mercor:
Mercor connects top-tier engineering talent with leading AI research labs. Backed by investors like Benchmark, General Catalyst, Adam D’Angelo, Larry Summers, and Jack Dorsey, we drive innovation at the intersection of AI and critical infrastructure.

About the Role:
Mercor is seeking a Backend Systems & DevOps Engineer to design and build terminal bench–style problems and simulation tasks within the backend/DevOps domain. You'll work with AI engineers to create realistic sandboxed environments, allowing AI agents to interact with, debug, and manage infrastructure-level systems autonomously. This is a unique opportunity to help benchmark agent reasoning, reliability, and operational performance in true-to-life settings.

Key Responsibilities:

• Build sandboxed terminal environments simulating backend and DevOps workflows

• Create reproducible tasks involving deployment debugging, log analysis, CI failures, monitoring alerts, or misconfigurations

• Simulate full-stack service environments using containers, microservices, and orchestration tools (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes)

• Collaborate with AI engineers to define reward functions, task boundaries, and performance metrics

• Implement systems for environment resets, benchmark versioning, and task automation

• Expand scope of tasks to cover complex, multi-service failures, rollbacks, scaling, or security missteps

Ideal Qualifications:

• 3+ years of experience in backend engineering, DevOps, or SRE

• Proficiency in Linux, Bash scripting, and terminal-based workflows

• Experience designing/managing CI/CD pipelines, containerized systems, and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure)

• Understanding of backend architecture: databases, API services, message queues, and monitoring stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK)

• Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Ansible, etc.), automated deployments, and observability pipelines

• Ability to debug system failures, config errors, or infrastructure bottlenecks

• Interest in agent-based systems and building simulation environments for AI

• Strong ownership mindset; able to work independently and creatively

Why This Role:

• Shape how AI agents are benchmarked in backend and DevOps domains

• Work at the frontier of AI x infrastructure with high autonomy and creative control

• Directly influence the next generation of agent benchmarking platforms

Project Details:

• Part-time (20 hrs/week), fully remote, asynchronous schedule

• Paid weekly via Stripe Connect as an hourly contractor

Mercor is committed to equal opportunity employment and welcomes applications from all qualified individuals. Reasonable accommodations are available upon request.

Apply now to help define the future of AI and infrastructure engineering!