{"id":847315,"url":"https://alion.io/job/mechanize-software-engineering-intern","title":"Software Engineering Intern","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":"2026-11-03T05:54:40Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"intern","employment_type":"internship","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":150,"max":150,"currency":"USD","period":"hour","gross":null,"usd_annual":300000},"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":"2025-11-19T21:50:52Z","employer_posted_date":"2025-11-19","last_verified_at":"2026-11-03T18:13:42Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":348,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":348},"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. Each task is a self-contained software engineering challenge with a prompt, an environment, and an automated grader. You own the full lifecycle: coming up with the idea, implementing the grading infrastructure, running frontier models against the task, analyzing where and why they fail, and iterating until the task is rigorous and fair.\nComing up with good task ideas requires being clever: finding situations where a frontier model will fail in interesting ways, which means seeing gaps that the model itself doesn't see. 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.\nWhat makes someone good at this\nStrong technical fundamentals combined with an 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. Most engineers significantly underestimate what frontier coding agents can already do; candidates who have spent significant time working with them will have a real head start.\nGood fit if you:\nAre graduating in 2026 or 2027\n\nCan code in Python\n\nAre confident working independently\n\nAre motivated by problems that require both technical skill and creative cleverness\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. Strong performers are recognized and promoted quickly. Benefits include 401k, health, dental, vision, and life insurance. Applying takes less than one minute.\nInterview process: https://www.mechanize.work/how-our-interview-process-works\nLearn more about the work: https://www.mechanize.work/what-working-here-is-like\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.","description_format":"text","description_chars":2688,"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":["401k plan","Life insurance"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["LLM & Generative AI","Reinforcement Learning"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-12T05:37:38Z"}],"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":3,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.103,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":348,"expected_fill_days":27,"reasons":["conf:2","win:tail","crowd:junior"],"computed_at":"2026-11-03T05:54:40Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":300000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/mechanize-software-engineering-intern","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/mechanize-software-engineering-intern.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-03T21:17:54Z","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":360,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-04T00:00:00Z"}},"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-engineering-intern"},{"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-engineering-intern"},{"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-engineering-intern"},{"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-engineering-intern\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fmechanize-software-engineering-intern"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":847315}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"mechanize.work","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":847315},"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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