{"id":847314,"url":"https://alion.io/job/mechanize-software-engineer","title":"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":null,"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":350000,"max":350000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":350000},"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":"2026-02-18T20:52:42Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-02-18","last_verified_at":"2026-11-04T09:04:55Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":258,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":258},"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 quality-assure RL tasks. Each task is a self-contained software engineering challenge with a prompt, an environment, and an automated grader. You own the full lifecycle: ideation, grading infrastructure, running frontier models against the task, failure analysis, and iteration. At this level, we expect you to consistently produce tasks that target meaningful capability gaps in frontier models, and to develop a strong sense for what makes a task informative versus merely difficult.\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 may also contribute to shared infrastructure: improving our build pipeline, automating parts of QA, or building tooling for other engineers.\nWhat makes someone good at this\nStrong technical fundamentals combined with a well-calibrated intuition for AI model behavior. You need to anticipate where a model will take shortcuts, distinguish genuine capability gaps from grader issues, and understand how a model will interpret a prompt. At this level, we expect extensive familiarity with what frontier coding agents can and can't do.\nGood fit if you:\nCan code in Python\n\nAre confident working independently at a consistent pace\n\nHave developed an intuition for what coding agents can and can't do\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\nPrefer a highly collaborative team environment with shared ownership\n\nWant extensive structured mentorship\n\nThis is independent, high-ownership work. You own your tasks from start to finish, with regular check-ins and feedback.\nCompensation\nCompensation includes a $350,000 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":2817,"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":4,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.159,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":258,"expected_fill_days":26,"reasons":["conf:1","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-11-04T06:34:25Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":350000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/mechanize-software-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/mechanize-software-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-04T11:37:40Z","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":17357,"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-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-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-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-software-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fmechanize-software-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":847314}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"mechanize.work","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":847314},"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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