6-10 years of engineering experience; 2-3+ years in a management role
Strong background in scalable system development
Ability to lead in ambiguous environments with sound technical judgment
Proven coaching skills for driving execution
Ownership mindset with pragmatic decision-making
Responsibilities
Manage and grow a team of 6-10 engineers
Coach high-potential engineers for career development
Establish engineering practices and high-performance culture
Drive insights behind evaluation systems to enhance model performance
Lead development and improve operational efficiency and system stability
Scale products that generate training data and enhance human-in-the-loop workflows
Translate AI goals into actionable engineering roadmaps
Benefits
Direct impact on frontier AI development
Opportunity to shape partnerships with leading AI labs
High ownership of team dynamics and hiring processes
Ability to influence a rapidly scaling organization
Collaboration at the intersection of engineering, product, data, and AI
Full Job Description
About the Role
We're hiring Engineering Managers to lead teams within our Applied AI organization.
Applied AI builds systems that directly improve model quality, including evaluation infrastructure, annotation products, and emerging multimodal capabilities. You'll lead a team of engineers, partner with product and research, and help define how Mercor stays at the frontier of AI.
You will also build partnerships with leading AI labs and directly contribute to improving the quality of frontier models through data, evaluation, and systems.
This role requires high ownership and abstraction: setting direction, driving outcomes, and staying hands-on while leading.
What You'll Work On Build and scale teams
Manage and grow a team of 6-10 engineers
Coach and develop high-potential engineers
Establish strong ownership, culture, and execution standards
Shape the team: define hiring processes, establish engineering practices, and scale a high-performing team from the ground up
Drive Applied AI systems and outcomes
Drive insights and methodology behind evaluation systems that benchmark and improve model performance
Lead development while driving improvements in data quality, operational efficiency, system stability, and scalability
Scale products that generate high-quality training data and improve human-in-the-loop workflows
Own technical direction
Lead system design for complex AI systems
Stay close to the technical work and guide engineers through ambiguous problems
Translate high-level AI goals into clear engineering roadmaps and execution plans
Operate across a broad scope
Partner with product, research, operations, and external AI labs
Work across systems, data insights, and custom partnerships to drive model quality
Shape the organization
Introduce lightweight processes as the organization scales
Hire and develop strong engineering talent
Help define engineering management at Mercor
What We're Looking For
6-10 years in engineering; 2-3+ years managing teams
Strong background in building scalable systems
Ability to lead in ambiguous environments with sound technical judgment
Proven ability to coach engineers and drive execution
Strong ownership mindset with pragmatic decision-making
Who Thrives Here
We're looking for engineering leaders who take ownership in ambiguous environments, make pragmatic decisions, and consistently deliver measurable impact.
Success Metrics
Build high-performing, well-supported teams
Hire and retain strong engineers
Improve team velocity and execution quality
Contribute to systems that measurably improve model performance
Location
San Francisco (preferred) or New York
Why This Role
Direct impact on frontier AI development
Build partnerships with leading AI labs and shape how frontier models improve
High ownership across team, systems, and hiring
Opportunity to shape a rapidly scaling organization
Work at the intersection of engineering, product, data, and AI
