We are looking for Software Engineer, Python — Codebase Q&A candidates for a project delivered through Mercor.
What you'll do
- Select tasks from a pre-validated pool of Python repositories, each pinned to a specific git commit and arriving with an engineering question, positive and negative rubrics, foils, and a golden solution
- Explore the repository until you genuinely understand the subsystem in question, including the relevant PR or issue history
- Rewrite the task's question so it defeats frontier coding agents while remaining well-defined and fairly answerable
- Adjust rubrics and foils so they reward correct reasoning and reject plausible-but-wrong answers
- Run the full validation loop in Studio — Check, Golden, Run, Analyze — and iterate until every stage passes
- Document your work in the task README and submit for expert review, addressing reviewer feedback on returned tasks
What you need
- 3+ years of professional software engineering experience, with substantial production Python
- Demonstrated ability to navigate a large, unfamiliar Python codebase and explain how it behaves at runtime — not just what the source says
- Fluency in Python internals that matter in real systems: import machinery, descriptors and metaclasses, async and event loops, packaging, and C-extension boundaries
- Precise written English: the questions and rubrics you write are the product
- Comfortable with git at commit level, containerized environments, and command-line tooling
Nice to have
- Experience with web frameworks, developer tooling, type checkers, or scientific/numeric libraries is highly relevant — the task mix is weighted toward architecture and system design (41%) and code onboarding (31%)
Expertise
Who you work with
Project and contracting process: Mercor. Applications continue on the provider's website.