Performance Engineer - AI Systems

About The Job Mercor connects elite creative and technical talent with leading AI research labs. Headquartered in San Francisco, our investors include Benchmark , General Catalyst , Peter Thiel , Adam D'Angelo , Larry Summers , and Jack Dorsey .

Position: Performance Engineer (C++, Python, Rust)

Type: Contract Compensation: $70–$110/hour Location: Remote Commitment: 40 hours/week Role Responsibilities

• Guide research and engineering teams to close knowledge gaps and improve AI model performance in systems-level optimization, compiler engineering, and runtime performance topics.
• Design challenging, domain-relevant tasks across multiple specializations, and write accurate and well-structured solutions to performance engineering problems.
• Evaluate performance engineering tasks and solutions and provide clear, written technical feedback.
• Develop guidelines and detailed rubrics/evaluation frameworks to assess systems design quality across AI workloads.
• Collaborate with other subject matter experts to ensure consistency and accuracy in training data.

Qualifications Must-Have

• 2+ years of dedicated professional experience in performance engineering, systems programming, or low-level optimization.
• Deep hands-on expertise in at least one of the following: C++, Python, or Rust — with working familiarity across the others being a strong plus.
• Demonstrable track record of measurable performance improvements on production systems (e.g., latency reduction, throughput gains, memory footprint optimization).
• Demonstrable career progression.
• Ability to engage reliably for at least 40 hours/week during weekdays.
• Strong written communication skills and the ability to explain complex technical decisions clearly.

Application Process (Takes 20–30 mins to complete)

• Upload resume
• AI interview based on your resume
• Submit form

Resources & Support

• For details about the interview process and platform information, please check: https://talent.docs.mercor.com/welcome
• For any help or support, reach out to: [email protected]

PS: Our team reviews applications daily. Please complete your AI interview and application steps to be considered for this opportunity.