---
title: 'Engineering Manager, Applied AI at Mercor'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-applied-ai-mercor-san-francisco-ve8jgbxp923w'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-12'
---

# Engineering Manager, Applied AI at Mercor

- **Company:** Mercor
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $250k–$400k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-06-19
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-12
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/mercor/b39b38ad-6b71-40da-854f-4a5de2657b50/application

**Skills:** System Design, AI Systems, Evaluation Infrastructure, Data Quality, Engineering Management

> Lead a team of 6-10 engineers within the Applied AI organization, Evaluation Systems team. Responsibilities include managing team growth, driving system design for complex AI, and partnering with research and product teams to improve model quality through data and evaluation infrastructure.

## Job description

## About Mercor

Mercor's mission is to organize human intelligence to power the AI economy. We're a leading AI data company, building the layer between human expertise and frontier models. Millions of domain experts on the platform are paid over $4 million per day to train frontier AI models. Mercor's APEX benchmark family measures AI's real-world impact on professional work. Mercor Enterprise brings this same infrastructure to Fortune 500 companies: helping companies capture how their best people actually work, translating that expertise directly back into agents.

Mercor is creating a new category of work where expertise powers AI advancement. Achieving this requires an ambitious, fast-paced and deeply committed team. You’ll work alongside researchers, operators, and AI companies at the forefront of shaping the systems that are redefining society. Mercor is a profitable Series C company valued at $10 billion. We work in-person five days a week in our San Francisco, NYC, or London offices.

## 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
- Relocation assistance will be provided as needed

## 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

## 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

## About Mercor

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Mercor organizes human intelligence to power the AI economy by connecting domain experts with frontier AI labs and enterprises for model training, evaluation, and deployment.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series C)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA (with offices in New York City and London)
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Brendan Foody & Adarsh Hiremath (Co-founders & Co-CEOs)

## Core Business
- Primary industry: AI Data & Infrastructure, Human-in-the-Loop AI, Enterprise AI
- Target customers: Frontier AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.), Fortune 500 enterprises deploying AI in production, and domain experts seeking high-value AI work
- Mission: Organizing human intelligence to power the AI economy — building the layer between human expertise and frontier models.

## Products & Services
- **Mercor Platform**: A global network of millions of domain experts across 300+ professional fields, paid over $3 million per day to train frontier AI models. Experts are found and vetted using dynamic, role-specific AI interviews.
- **APEX Benchmark**: A benchmark family that measures AI's real-world impact on professional work, setting a standard for whether AI can perform economically valuable work.
- **Mercor Enterprise**: Brings Mercor's expert network and evaluation infrastructure to Fortune 500 companies, deploying custom AI agents, staffing teams with vetted domain experts, and helping organizations encode their own knowledge into AI systems.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: $10 billion valuation (as of Series C)
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding — $350 million Series C (recently raised); company is profitable
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not explicitly named in provided sources, but the company works with leading AI labs and Fortune 500 enterprises
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - Named to Bloomberg's "2026 24 AI Startups to Watch"
  - Forbes AI 50 (2025)
  - Forbes Cloud 100 (2025)
  - LinkedIn Top Startup (2025)
  - Described as "the fastest-growing company in the world"
  - Tens of thousands of skilled professionals earning an average of more than $95/hour on the platform

## Competitive Advantages
- **Massive, vetted expert network**: Millions of domain experts across 300+ fields, found and vetted via AI-driven interviews — a hard-to-replicate moat.
- **Direct frontier model exposure**: Every team works directly with frontier models, training them and building around them — most companies haven't imagined this level of integration.
- **Profitability at scale**: Profitable at Series C with a $10B valuation, indicating strong unit economics.
- **End-to-end AI infrastructure**: From expert sourcing and vetting to model evaluation (APEX) to enterprise deployment — a vertically integrated stack.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scaling the expert network**: Continuing to onboard millions of domain experts globally to meet the insatiable demand for high-quality human training data.
- **Enterprise AI deployment**: Expanding Mercor Enterprise to help Fortune 500 companies encode organizational knowledge into AI systems and deploy custom agents.
- **Benchmarking AI's economic impact**: Growing the APEX benchmark as the standard for measuring whether AI can perform economically valuable work.
- **Preparing for AGI**: The company's founding thesis is about answering what role humans will play in the economy as AGI approaches.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: "Built for people who thrive in high-velocity environments." Values include Intensity, Simplicity, User Obsession, High Standards, Can-Do Attitude, and Time Travelers (thinking ahead).
- **Work model**: In-person collaboration from offices in San Francisco, New York City, and London. No remote option — the company believes in-person collaboration helps move faster and solve harder problems.
- **Engineering culture**: Direct exposure to frontier AI research, labs, and startups. Every team works with frontier models daily. Described as "the fastest-growing company in the world."
- **Compensation**: Generous equity grants, competitive salaries (ranges from $100K–$500K depending on role), and a "proximity bonus" (generous annual housing support).
- **Benefits**: 
  - Unlimited paid vacation and sick days
  - Free Equinox membership (premium fitness access)
  - Monthly wellness stipend and free mental health services
  - Monthly food stipend
  - 401k with employer match
  - Parental leave for both birthing and non-birthing parents
- **Team**: "A team of ambitious, diverse people who want to work on what matters most." Open roles across Engineering (31 roles), Operations (15 roles), Enterprise (5 roles), Finance (4 roles), and more.

## Sources
1. [mercor.com](https://www.mercor.com/)
2. [mercor.com/careers](https://www.mercor.com/careers/)
3. [mercor.com/mission](https://www.mercor.com/mission/)
4. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/mercor](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/mercor)
5. [linkedin.com/company/mercor-ai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/mercor-ai)

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