Senior Software Engineer, AI Training - NZ

Contract | Remote, worldwide | $100-$200/hour depending on experience and location | 10-20 hrs/week

Check out this Loom video for more details: https://www.loom.com/share/b0d1b0bf24c44ae8b95dca84b9db60e5

We're looking for highly experienced software engineer (SR+) to help evaluate the quality of interactions with modern coding agents such as OpenAI Codex and Claude Code.

This is not a traditional engineering role. You won't be writing production code. You'll be evaluating something harder: whether the model thinks like a great engineer.

What this role actually is

You will assess how AI coding agents behave in real-world scenarios, focusing on:

• Whether the response makes sense
• Whether the preamble and reasoning are useful
• Whether the output reflects strong engineering judgment
• Whether the interaction feels right to an experienced developer

This role is about engineering taste. Syntax correctness is the easy part.

What you'll be doing

• Evaluate AI-generated coding interactions end to end
• Judge whether outputs are useful, correct at a high level, and aligned with how a strong engineer would think
• Assess the quality of explanations and reasoning, not just the code
• Distinguish between levels of response quality (what makes something a 2 vs a 4)
• Give clear, opinionated feedback in writing on what worked, what didn't, and what felt off or misleading
• Help define what great looks like when working with tools like Cursor, Codex and Claude Code

What we mean by "taste"

We're looking for engineers who can answer questions like:

• Does this feel like something a strong engineer would actually say?
• Is this explanation helpful, or just technically correct?
• Is the model guiding the user well, or just dumping output?
• Would this interaction build or erode trust?

You should be comfortable making subjective but rigorous judgments, and explaining them clearly.

Who you are

• Senior, Staff or Principal-level engineer (or equivalent experience)
• Strong background in TypeScript/JavaScript or Python
• Hands-on experience with at least one of OpenAI Codex, Claude Code or Cursor
• Deep familiarity with modern AI-assisted dev workflows
• Able to evaluate code without executing it or reviewing every line
• Strong written and spoken English (B2 or above). You'll be writing detailed feedback and recording short video explanations, so this is a hard requirement
• Comfortable giving direct, opinionated feedback
• High bar for what good engineering looks like

Nice to have

• Prior exposure to prompt design or evaluation workflows
• Experience mentoring senior engineers or defining engineering standards

Engagement details

• Rate: $100-$200/hour depending on experience and location
• Hours: 10-20 hours/week, flexible
• Duration: ongoing. Projects run from about two weeks to a few months each, and we offer new ones to evaluators who do well
• Start: as soon as you clear the take-home and a project has an open seat
• Process: one take-home evaluation exercise with a recorded Loom walkthrough. No interview