Staff Software Engineer (AI Evals)

Contract | 20-40 hrs/week

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

Hours: ~20 hours+
Duration: Short-term, starting from 2 weeks to 6 months
Start: As soon as a project starts
Process:

• Take-home evaluation exercise
• Background Check
• Offer