mechanize
mechanize1mo ago
New
$400K • Offers Equity • Offers Bonus/yr

Senior Software Engineer

San Franciscofull-timesenior
Software EngineerSoftware Engineering
0 views0 saves0 applied

Quick Summary

Overview

About Mechanize Mechanize builds reinforcement learning environments that frontier AI labs use to train and evaluate their coding models. Learn more at mechanize.work.

Key Responsibilities

You'll design, build, and refine RL tasks, owning the full lifecycle from ideation through grading, failure analysis, and iteration.

Technical Tools
pythondistributed-systemsmentoringsystem-design

Mechanize builds reinforcement learning environments that frontier AI labs use to train and evaluate their coding models. Learn more at mechanize.work.

AI models have gotten good at narrow coding tasks but still fail at the complex, judgment-heavy parts of software engineering. We build the environments that expose those failures and help models improve.

Responsibilities

~1 min read

You'll design, build, and refine RL tasks, owning the full lifecycle from ideation through grading, failure analysis, and iteration. At this level, we expect you to work on our most complex tasks: environments involving multi-step workflows, realistic stakeholder interactions, large codebases with real conventions and technical debt, or challenging system design problems.

You will use coding agents heavily, and a large part of the job is directing them well, evaluating their output, and knowing when they are failing in subtle ways. You will also contribute to shared infrastructure and tooling, and may take on mentorship responsibilities for newer team members.

Deep software engineering experience across multiple domains, combined with a strong intuition for AI model behavior. You need to anticipate where a model will take shortcuts, distinguish genuine capability gaps from grader issues, and design tasks that target deeper, more subtle failure modes from areas you know well: infrastructure, distributed systems, performance, security, or other specializations.

  • Have deep expertise in at least one area of software engineering

  • Can code in Python

  • Are confident working independently on complex, ambiguous problems

  • Have extensive experience working with coding agents

  • No prior ML or AI experience required

  • Want a product engineering role building features for end users

This is independent, high-ownership work. You own your tasks from start to finish, with regular feedback.

What We Offer

~1 min read

Compensation includes a $400,000 base salary, equity, and performance bonuses. Top performers can earn more in bonuses than in base salary.

Strong performers are recognized and promoted quickly. Benefits include health, dental, vision, and life insurance.

About Mechanize. ~20 person team in San Francisco. Backed by Patrick Collison, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Jeff Dean, Dwarkesh Patel, and Sholto Douglas. Featured in the New York Times, the Dwarkesh Podcast and Hard Fork.

Learn more about the interview process: https://www.mechanize.work/how-our-interview-process-works

Learn more about the work: https://www.mechanize.work/what-working-here-is-like

Location & Eligibility

Where is the job
San Francisco
On-site at the office
Who can apply
Same as job location

Listing Details

Posted
March 12, 2026
First seen
May 8, 2026
Last seen
May 8, 2026

Posting Health

Days active
0
Repost count
0
Trust Level
25%
Scored at
May 8, 2026

Signal breakdown

freshnesssource trustcontent trustemployer trust
Newsletter

Stay ahead of the market

Get the latest job openings, salary trends, and hiring insights delivered to your inbox every week.

A
B
C
D
Join 12,000+ marketers

No spam. Unsubscribe at any time.

mechanizeSenior Software Engineer$400K • Offers Equity • Offers Bonus