IMPORTANT: Only apply if you are an immediate joiner and are comfortable working on a 3-month contract. These are the first two criteria assessed before anything else in your profile.

Engagement Type: Short-term contract (3 months)

Start Date: Immediate

Availability: At least 8 hours per day and a minimum of 40 hours per week, with 4 hours of overlap with PST.

LinkedIn Profile: A LinkedIn profile is mandatory for review. Please include the LinkedIn profile link in your resume.

ROLE OVERVIEW

We are looking for a Strategic Project Lead with direct experience operating software-engineering data programs for frontier AI models. This is not a general software engineering, AI program management, enterprise AI delivery, or data-platform role. You should be able to take over an active software-engineering data project with minimal training.

We will prioritize candidates from Mercor, Scale AI, Surge AI, Handshake, xAI, or comparable companies who have personally owned one or more of the following:

- Coding training or post-training data
- Coding RLHF or preference data
- Software-engineering (SWE) benchmarks or model evaluations
- Agentic coding environments
- Code-generation or code-repair datasets

The candidate must have owned the production system, including SWE contributor sourcing and calibration, task throughput, quality, rework, cost, and delivery recovery. They should be able to read code and tests, inspect the final artifact, diagnose why an invalid task passed QA, and make a release or rejection decision. What Does Day-to-Day Look Like?





- Operate active software-engineering data and evaluation programs end to end.
- Manage contributor sourcing, calibration, onboarding, reviewer capacity, and performance.
- Track task throughput, quality, rework, defects, cost, and delivery timelines.
- Review code, tests, task metadata, and final artifacts for technical correctness.
- Diagnose quality failures and improve task design, rubrics, instructions, and review processes.
- Lead recovery plans when programs fall behind on quality, throughput, cost, or timelines.
- Coordinate distributed software engineers, reviewers, and team leads.
- Communicate progress, risks, and corrective actions to customer research and program teams.
- Use Python, SQL, or similar tools for quality analysis, defect tracking, and operational reporting.

Requirements

- Direct experience operating production software-engineering data programs for frontier AI models, preferably involving coding training, coding RLHF, SWE benchmarks, model evaluations, agentic coding, code generation, or code repair.
- Proven ownership of the full production system, including contributor sourcing and calibration, task throughput, quality, rework, cost management, and delivery recovery.




- Strong software-engineering judgment, with the ability to read code and tests, inspect final artifacts, identify invalid technical work, and make release or rejection decisions.
- Experience managing distributed software-engineering contributors, reviewers, and team leads while maintaining consistent quality and delivery performance.
- Ability to take over an active program quickly, diagnose operational problems independently, and communicate explicit decisions and recovery plans.

Please Do Not Apply If You Are

- A generic technical program manager without direct SWE-data program experience.
- An enterprise GenAI or cloud-transformation leader without hands-on ownership of SWE data programs.
- A data-engineering program manager without relevant SWE-data experience.
- An annotation-operations leader without software-engineering data experience.
- A software engineer who has not run a scaled production operation.

Please Include

1. The exact SWE-data or coding-evaluation project you operated.
2. Your personal ownership and responsibilities.
3. Contributor scale and throughput.
4. The quality and acceptance system you used.
5. The code, task, or evaluation artifact you personally inspected.

Quality over quantity is key for this requirement. If your profile does not clearly demonstrate the exact project experience and personal ownership described above, please do not apply.

Evaluation Process

- 1st Step: AI Interview
- 2nd Step: Delivery Interview

📌 Strategic Project Lead – Software Engineering (India)
🏢 Hyper Lychee Labs
📍 India