Competitive Programming Specialist - India

Mercor is hiring a Competitive Programming Specialist to create terminal bench–style problems and tasks involving agents within a competitive programming environment, as part of a hiring effort for its AI lab partner building advanced agent-based infrastructure. This role is ideal for coders with a strong background in algorithmic thinking, problem design, and hands-on experience with competitive programming platforms. You'll be developing interactive, terminal-based challenges that test the problem-solving capabilities of autonomous agents in real-time coding scenarios.

You’re a great fit if you:

• Have a track record of success in competitive programming contests (e.g., ICPC, Codeforces, LeetCode, AtCoder, HackerRank).

• Possess strong skills in algorithms, data structures, and systems-level thinking.

• Are proficient in Python, C++, or Go, and comfortable working in terminal-based coding environments.

• Can design programming problems that test time complexity, memory constraints, logic correctness, and multi-step reasoning.

• Have experience with online judge systems, sandboxed environments, or contest infrastructure.

• Are curious about AI agents and interested in how agents can solve real-world programming tasks.

• Enjoy creating reproducible, progressive challenges and can abstract real-world systems problems into code-based puzzles.

Primary Goal of This Role

To create terminal bench–style problems and tasks where autonomous agents are challenged to solve competitive programming problems in a live, terminal-driven environment. These tasks will test agent performance across algorithmic domains — such as graph theory, dynamic programming, greedy techniques, and real-time debugging — and serve as a benchmark for reasoning, adaptability, and correctness under constraints.

What You’ll Do

• Design and implement terminal-based coding challenges for agents to solve autonomously.

• Build a sandboxed, judge-like environment that runs test cases, checks correctness, and monitors time/memory usage.

• Simulate real-world competitive conditions: limited time, incremental hints, multiple submissions, etc.

• Collaborate with AI engineers to define reward functions, failure conditions, and difficulty tiers.

• Develop tooling for benchmark resets, output validation, and scenario generation.

• Evolve the difficulty of problems from beginner-level syntax and logic to advanced algorithmic pipelines and systems simulations.

Why This Role Is Exciting

• Define a new generation of programming benchmarks built specifically for AI agents.

• Blend algorithmic design, problem solving, and systems-level realism in one role.

• Work on uncharted challenges that push the boundaries of what agents can understand and execute.

We consider all qualified applicants without regard to legally protected characteristics and provide reasonable accommodations upon request.

Contract and Payment Terms

• You will be engaged as an independent contractor.
• This is a fully remote role that can be completed on your own schedule.
• Projects can be extended, shortened, or concluded early depending on needs and performance.
• Your work at Mercor will not involve access to confidential or proprietary information from any employer, client, or institution.
• Payments are weekly on Stripe or Wise based on services rendered.
• Please note: We are unable to support H1-B or STEM OPT candidates at this time.

About Mercor

Mercor partners with leading AI labs and enterprises to train frontier models using human expertise. You will work on projects that focus on training and enhancing AI systems. You will be paid competitively, collaborate with leading researchers, and help shape the next generation of AI systems in your area of expertise.