Principal Infrastructure Engineer

About The Job

Mercor connects elite creative and technical talent with leading AI research labs. Headquartered in San Francisco, our investors include Benchmark , General Catalyst , Peter Thiel , Adam D'Angelo , Larry Summers , and Jack Dorsey .

Position: Software Engineer

Type: Freelance

Compensation: $75–$80/hour

Location: Remote

Duration: 1–2 weeks

Commitment: 15–40 hours/week

Role Responsibilities

• Evaluate and compare the performance of AI-powered CLI coding agents on real-world infrastructure debugging tasks.
• Solve TerminalBench tasks using AI CLI agents to diagnose and fix failing systems.
• Write bash scripts to address root causes and ensure they survive service restarts.
• Diagnose broken systems inside Docker containers involving databases, TLS, pipelines, and more.
• Compare and rank agents' approaches after each task to inform product decisions.
• Work independently and asynchronously with flexible hours.

Qualifications

Must-Have:

• 3+ years of experience in software engineering with hands-on debugging of systems and infrastructure.
• Strong bash/shell scripting proficiency.
• Experience with Docker and containerization.
• Skills in infrastructure and systems debugging with PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, nginx, TLS, systemd, and log analysis.
• Familiarity with version control workflows (Git, PRs, issue tracking).

Preferred:

• Experience with AI coding tools like Copilot, Cursor, or Claude.

Start Date

• Immediate