Is this job worth applying to?

Pay

About typicalTops out at $90/hr. The typical top rate across 237 priced coding listings is $90/hr.

Getting in

Some screening~30 min: resume upload + 20-min AI interview. Resume showing real experience in your field.

Steady work

Work is patchyProjects can pause or end with little notice.

Payout record

Pays on timeSchedule: weekly, every Wednesday. Paid via Stripe (Wise in a few countries).

Freshness

Older postPosted 2mo ago. Still listed on Mercor on Nov 6, 2026.

Where you live

Named countries onlyOpen in United States.

The job description

Evaluate the quality, correctness, and completeness of GPU/accelerator kernel development tasks used to train and evaluate a frontier AI lab's models. You'll assess numerical correctness, performance-benchmarking fairness, task scoping, and compilation/runtime validity across diverse kernel task types — and provide clear, rubric-based written feedback.

Basic Qualifications

3+ years of hands-on experience developing, optimizing, or verifying GPU/accelerator kernels in at least two of: CUDA, Triton, NKI, or Pallas (JAX)
Strong understanding of numerical-correctness criteria for kernels (absolute/relative/ULP tolerances, reference-implementation selection)
Demonstrated experience with performance profiling and benchmarking (nsight, ncu, roofline analysis, or framework-native profilers)
Familiarity with common compilation and runtime failure modes (driver mismatches, OOM, launch-configuration errors, shape/stride mismatches, autotuning failures)
Experience with at least three kernel task types: generation from specification, translation/lowering across frameworks, migration between hardware targets, debugging, performance optimization, or operator fusion

Preferred Qualifications

Experience across both NVIDIA GPU (CUDA/Triton) and custom-accelerator (NKI/Pallas/TPU) ecosystems
Background in compiler engineering, MLIR, or intermediate-representation lowering
Understanding of memory-hierarchy optimization (shared-memory tiling, register pressure, bank conflicts, coalescing patterns)
Contributions to kernel libraries (cuBLAS, cuDNN, Triton community kernels, JAX/XLA custom calls)

How do you apply to Mercor?

Apply on Mercor

The Apply button opens this post on Mercor's own site. You apply with them, not with Rubric. Budget about 30 min: resume upload + 20-min AI interview.

Get through screening

What Mercor asks for after you apply:

Take the recorded AI video interview (practice round available)
Complete any role-specific assessment and the ID check
Accept the offer and sign the contract

Start work and get paid

Pay schedule: weekly, every Wednesday. Paid via Stripe (Wise in a few countries). You're paid for the work they hand out, not a fixed salary.

Mercor also needs

Resume showing real experience in your field
Webcam with your full face visible for the AI interview
Government ID

Red flags

Red flagLong waits with no offer after passing the interview
Red flagProjects ending abruptly with little warning

What is Mercor like to work for?

Hiring marketplace that screens professionals with an AI video interview and places them on hourly contracts training and evaluating models for AI labs.

Advertised pay	$20–200/hr
Getting in	Some screening
Application takes	~30 min: resume upload + 20-min AI interview
How you get paid	Weekly, every Wednesday, via Stripe (Wise in a few countries)
Payout record	Pays on time
Countries	Hires in many countries and runs its pay week on India Standard Time; Mercor keeps a list of locations it cannot onboard, and some projects are US-only.

Most listings sit around $50–100/hr; healthcare, legal and finance roles pay the most, language and generalist roles the least.