Mercor · Software & coding

Software Engineer — Agentic Search Systems

Listed on Mercor as “Software Engineer - Agentic Search Systems”

$80-$150/hrRemoteContractPaid in USD

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How this rate compares

This listing

$80–$150 per hour

Typical in Software & coding

$70–$120 per hour

Within the typical range

Typical: the middle of the lowest and highest rates posted by 36 listings in this category on Seoulstart, in US dollars.

What this actually is

You review AI-generated code, rank model outputs against each other, write prompts that test edge cases, and provide expert feedback that gets used to train coding models. Not shipping production software. The platform title (Software Engineer - Agentic Search Systems) reflects the rate band and the expertise required, not the day-to-day work.

How Mercor picks people

Upload your CV and answer the role's written questions.
Do a video interview with Mercor's AI interviewer. Most take about 20 minutes, in English unless the role says otherwise.
Some roles add a skills test. A test you pass once counts for similar roles.
The project team reviews your results and sends offers to the people it picks.

Before you start

Take Mercor's free practice interview first. It does not count toward any application.
Use Chrome on a computer with a camera and microphone, in a quiet room.
You can retake an official interview up to 3 times, but hiring teams see how many times you retook it.

Not every applicant gets an offer. Prepare well for the interview.

How to prepare for the Mercor interview

Source: Mercor's help pages. talent.docs.mercor.com

Can you do this on your visa?

F-2 / F-4 / F-5 / F-6: open. E-1 to E-7: needs concurrent-employment permit. D-2 / D-4 students: S-3 permit, 20 hr/week cap. D-10 / D-8: case by case.

Korean tax on USD income

First 5 years in Korea: foreign-source income only taxed if remitted into Korea. After year 5: worldwide income. Full tax guide.

Original posting from Mercor

We're looking for engineers who have shipped production search systems (especially agentic ones now that we're in the era of LLMs and agents) and are thinking hard about the requirements and optimizations of those systems.

You've probably:

Owned relevance or retrieval on a system real users depended on

Decided how to quantify impact and improvements with these systems.

Built out systems related to agentic search.

Scaled data infrastructure to power modern search systems.

This is a 25-minute conversational interview. No coding, no take-home. We want to hear how you actually think about search quality, evaluation, and the tradeoffs you've made in real systems. Bring war stories - the messier and more specific, the better.

If your interview stands out, we'll follow up with a paid 30-minute live conversation with our team - $200 for your time, paid on completion of the call.

If that sounds like you, apply and complete the interview. We review every submission.

Quoted from Mercor's public listing on 2026-11-13. We don't edit platform copy; honest framing is in the title and the “what this actually is” block above.

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