About the role
Staff Software Engineer (AI Evals)
Contract | $100–$200/hour | 20-40 hrs/week | Start ASAP
We’re looking for highly experienced software engineer to help evaluate the quality of interactions with modern coding agents such as OpenAI Codex and Claude Code.
This is not a traditional engineering role.
You won’t be writing production code.
You’ll be evaluating something harder: whether the model thinks like a great engineer.
What This Role Actually Is
You will assess how AI coding agents behave in real-world scenarios — focusing on:
- Whether the response makes sense
- Whether the preamble and reasoning are useful
- Whether the output reflects strong engineering judgment
- Whether the interaction feels right to an experienced developer
This role is about engineering taste — not syntax correctness.
What You’ll Be Doing
- Evaluate AI-generated coding interactions end-to-end
- Judge whether outputs are:
- Useful
- Correct (at a high level)
- Aligned with how a strong engineer would think
- Assess the quality of explanations and reasoning, not just code
- Distinguish between different levels of response quality (e.g. what makes something a 2 vs 4)
- Provide clear, opinionated feedback on:
- What worked
- What didn’t
- What felt “off” or misleading
- Help define what great looks like when interacting with tools like Cursor
What We Mean by “Taste”
We’re specifically looking for engineers who can answer questions like:
- Does this feel like something a strong engineer would actually say?
- Is this explanation helpful, or just technically correct?
- Is the model guiding the user well, or just dumping output?
- Would this interaction build or erode trust?
You should be comfortable making subjective but rigorous judgments.
Who You Are
- Staff / Principal-level engineer (or equivalent experience)
- Strong background in one of the below:
- Go
- Python
- Rust
- TypeScript / JavaScript
- Hands-on experience using:
- OpenAI Codex
- Claude Code
- Cursor
- Deep familiarity with modern AI-assisted dev workflows
- Able to evaluate code without needing to fully execute or deeply review every line
- Comfortable giving direct, opinionated feedback
- High bar for what “good engineering” looks like
Nice to Have
- Experience with tools like Cursor or similar AI-first IDEs
- Prior exposure to prompt design or evaluation workflows
- Experience mentoring senior engineers or defining engineering standards
Engagement Details
- Rate: $100–$200/hour
- Hours: ~20 hours+
- Duration: Through October w/possible extentions
- Start: ASAP
- Process:
- Take-home evaluation exercise
- Background Check
- Offer