Payments Engineer

About the role

The Payments group at Mercor is responsible for ensuring that money moves deterministically and reliably at scale. They lead the Ledger, Payout, and Settlement systems, making sure they are observable end-to-end, with root causes fixed rather than patched. Automation replaces manual intervention wherever possible.

Responsibilities

• Automate payout orchestration (eliminate human-triggered scripts)
• Build a real operational ledger (immutable, auditable, correct)
• Design settlement ingestion and reconciliation pipelines
• Improve observability across payout → processor → bank flows
• Eliminate recurring payment bugs at their root cause
• Reduce manual treasury overhead
• Abstract processor dependencies to avoid vendor lock-in

Requirements

• 5+ years of industry experience in backend/platform engineering (or equivalent), including ownership of production systems
• Demonstrated ability to integrate with and manage third-party payment gateways (e.g., Stripe, Adyen) and/or direct banking APIs
• Understanding of financial regulations, including adherence to PCI-DSS, and the secure handling and encryption of sensitive banking and customer data
• 3+ years of professional experience building around transactional databases like MySQL or PostgreSQL, compiled languages like Go, Rust, or C++, and message queues or streaming platforms (e.g., RabbitMQ, SQS, Kafka)
• Experience with distributed systems frameworks like temporal, k8s, etc.
• Proven ability to manage and operate production systems under significant load, balancing velocity of development with maximum reliability

Qualifications

• Comfortable working in high-intensity, fast-growing, ambiguous environments
• System-level thinking, prioritizing reliability, correctness, and automation

Skills

• Backend Expertise
• Payment Infrastructure Expertise
• Compliance and Security
• Technical Proficiency
• Operational Excellence

Benefits

• Bi-annual performance bonus structure
• Gross 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

Pay

Compensation Range: $100K - $500K

Schedule

Work in-person five days a week in our San Francisco, NYC, or London offices.