{"id":3658274,"url":"https://alion.io/job/meritfirst-senior-software-engineer","title":"Senior Software Engineer","company":{"id":3781462,"name":"MeritFirst","domain":"meritfirst.us","url":"https://alion.io/company/meritfirst","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":null},"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":["Austin, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Next.js","optional":false},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false},{"name":"Vercel","optional":false},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":true},{"name":"React.js","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-02T22:56:37Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-02","last_verified_at":"2026-11-05T03:17:18Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":2,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":2},"description":"America is strongest when ability can rise\nThe right person can change the trajectory of a team, a company, or an entire field. Yet most hiring still filters on what is easiest to read: the right degree, the right employer, the right network. Those are poor proxies for what someone can actually do. When they miss real ability, a company loses performance and an idea goes unbuilt.\nMeritFirst builds objective, efficient ways for people to demonstrate critical thinking, problem-solving, adaptability, and execution, so companies can hire on demonstrated ability rather than pedigree. For the worker, that means upward mobility. For the company, better performance. At scale, national growth.\nThe role\nOur product has to produce a signal that deserves to influence real decisions about people. Candidates need to trust that they got a fair chance to show what they can do. Employers need to trust that the signal predicts performance better than the credentials they already use. Earning both takes careful product judgment, rigorous measurement, and software that is reliable and explainable.\nAs a Senior Software Engineer, you will own major parts of that system end to end, from the candidate experience and assessment engine to employer workflows and evaluation. You will join a small team and work directly with our founder, candidates, and customers. Roadmaps here do not arrive fully specified. You'll decide what should exist, ship the first version, watch how it behaves, and improve it quickly. You will also make the engineers around you better through the systems you architect and the code you review.\nWe use AI heavily. However, if you can't reason about and explain each line of your code, your work isn't ready. Our standard is a system we understand, can explain, test, and trust.\nWhat we're working on\nHands-on challenges that show how candidates work with AI\n\nVoice and video interviews\n\nScoring that employers can audit and candidates can trust\n\nIntegrations with the hiring tools employers already use\n\nStack: TypeScript, Next.js, Postgres, and Vercel.\nEngineering team size: 3.\nLocation: onsite in Austin, Texas.\nWhat you'll do\nOwn an area end to end. Early on, you'll take on one of our highest-leverage product areas: its design, code, production health, and roadmap.\n\nLead technical design. Turn ambiguous problems into written designs, make the tradeoffs explicit, and align the team before the big work starts.\n\nBuild evaluation worth trusting. Make results consistent, auditable, and hard to game. Use AI where it measurably helps, and build the evals that prove it.\n\nClose the learning loop. Connect assessment results, employer decisions, and on-the-job outcomes so the product gets more predictive over time.\n\nTreat trust as a technical requirement. Reliability, security, and privacy are product properties from day one.\n\nRaise the bar. Give code reviews that teach, mentor other engineers, and help hire the people who join next.\n\nYou'll thrive here if you\nHave led the design and delivery of significant production systems, and operated them long enough to live with your decisions.\n\nHave deep expertise in one part of the stack and can work across the rest.\n\nDebug relentlessly: form hypotheses, follow evidence, and dig beneath frameworks and libraries until you understand the issue.\n\nKnow when to build the simplest thing that works vs. when to invest in a foundation.\n\nHave built software before LLMs and treat AI-written code like code from a stranger.\n\nHave made other engineers better through design review, code review, or mentorship.\n\nCommunicate clearly, disagree directly, and can explain a technical tradeoff to a non-engineer.\n\nThis probably isn't the role if you\nWant requirements and architecture fully specified before you start.\n\nWant to lead others without staying hands-on in the code.\n\nLove building something new but lose interest in maintaining what you ship.\n\nWant a predictable 9-to-5.\n\nAre more excited by the idea of meritocracy, or by AI hype, than by the hard work of building something people can trust.\n\nHow we hire\nOur process tests demonstrated ability, not pedigree or interview polish.\nSome steps may be with AI and some without. We want to see your foundations, how you reason, and how you use modern tools without giving up judgment. Along the way, you'll use the MeritFirst product yourself.","description_format":"text","description_chars":4364,"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":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Skill Assessment","Recruiting Software & ATS"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-03T02:54:05Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":1,"expected_fill_days":29,"reasons":["conf:3","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-04T06:34:25Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/meritfirst-senior-software-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/meritfirst-senior-software-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-05T03:52:24Z","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":4971,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-06T00:00:00Z"}},"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":3781462},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=3781462"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fmeritfirst-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%2Fmeritfirst-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%2Fmeritfirst-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/meritfirst-senior-software-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fmeritfirst-senior-software-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3658274}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"meritfirst.us","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3658274},"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. Docs: https://alion.io/developers"}}