Performance Engineer - AI Systems
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.
About the role
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.
Requirements
- 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.
Pay
$70–$110/hour
Schedule
40 hours/week (contract, remote)