{"id":847313,"url":"https://alion.io/job/mechanize-senior-software-engineer","title":"Senior Software Engineer","company":{"id":680184,"name":"Mechanize","domain":"mechanize.work","url":"https://alion.io/company/mechanize","size_band":"1-10","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":4,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-11-04T06:34:25Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":400000,"max":400000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":400000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Reinforcement Learning","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-03-12T00:26:52Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-03-12","last_verified_at":"2026-11-04T18:40:53Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":237,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":237},"description":"About Mechanize\nMechanize builds reinforcement learning environments that frontier AI labs use to train and evaluate their coding models. Learn more at mechanize.work.\nWhy the work matters\nAI 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.\nWhat you'll do\nYou'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.\nYou 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.\nWhat makes someone good at this\nDeep 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.\nGood fit if you:\nHave deep expertise in at least one area of software engineering\n\nCan code in Python\n\nAre confident working independently on complex, ambiguous problems\n\nHave extensive experience working with coding agents\n\nNo prior ML or AI experience required\n\nProbably not a good fit if you:\nWant a product engineering role building features for end users\n\nThis is independent, high-ownership work. You own your tasks from start to finish, with regular feedback.\nCompensation\nCompensation includes a $400,000 base salary, equity, and performance bonuses. Top performers can earn more in bonuses than in base salary.\nStrong performers are recognized and promoted quickly. Benefits include health, dental, vision, and life insurance.\nAbout 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.\nLearn more about the interview process: https://www.mechanize.work/how-our-interview-process-works\nLearn more about the work: https://www.mechanize.work/what-working-here-is-like","description_format":"text","description_chars":2653,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Life insurance"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["LLM & Generative AI","Reinforcement Learning"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-13T01:29:25Z"},{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-26T02:27:17Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 3","filings_12m":3,"filings_prev_12m":0,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":352500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-29T16:27:21+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":3}],"liveness":{"score":13,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.478,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":237,"expected_fill_days":30,"reasons":["conf:1","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-11-04T06:34:25Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":400000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/mechanize-senior-software-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/mechanize-senior-software-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-04T19:23:26Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":29860,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-05T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":680184},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=680184"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fmechanize-senior-software-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fmechanize-senior-software-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fmechanize-senior-software-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/mechanize-senior-software-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fmechanize-senior-software-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":847313}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"mechanize.work","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":847313},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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