Software Engineer (Open Source Contributor)

This role is for one of our clients

Pay: 50–100/hour

Role Type: Contractor

Location: Anywhere in the world, remote

Estimated Time Commitment: Approximately 15 hours per task run

Start Timeline: Within 24–48 hours of onboarding

We are seeking experienced Software Engineers and Open Source Contributors to help develop and evaluate next-generation AI systems through high-quality software engineering tasks. This opportunity is ideal for developers with strong programming fundamentals, practical experience contributing to open-source projects, and a proven ability to solve complex engineering problems.

In this role, you will design realistic, challenging, and reproducible coding environments that assess an AI model’s ability to fix bugs, implement new features, refactor existing code, and optimize software performance. You will also develop reliable verification mechanisms and golden reference solutions to evaluate whether AI-generated code meets the specified requirements.

Prior experience in artificial intelligence is not required. Your software engineering expertise, code quality standards, debugging skills, and open-source contributions will be central to the role.

Requirements

Key Responsibilities

• Coding Task Development: Create realistic, technically challenging programming tasks involving bug fixes, feature development, code refactoring, and performance optimization.
• Reproducible Environment Setup: Build deterministic reinforcement learning environments with the necessary dependencies, test suites, configurations, and execution instructions.
• Reference Solution Implementation: Develop reliable golden reference solutions that demonstrate the expected behavior and satisfy all task requirements.
• Automated Verification: Design deterministic evaluators and test cases that accept valid implementations while rejecting incorrect, incomplete, or non-compliant solutions.
• Software Debugging: Investigate complex software defects, troubleshoot unexpected behavior, and resolve performance bottlenecks across diverse codebases.
• Feature Engineering: Implement robust and scalable features while following established software development principles and coding standards.
• Code Refactoring and Optimization: Improve existing codebases by enhancing readability, maintainability, execution efficiency, and long-term reliability.
• Code Review and Validation: Review code contributions and technical submissions for correctness, clarity, performance, and adherence to best practices.
• Technical Documentation: Document problem statements, implementation decisions, debugging strategies, testing procedures, and solution reasoning to support high-quality AI training and evaluation.
• Continuous Improvement: Refine tasks and evaluation criteria based on observed model behavior and identified weaknesses.

Required Qualifications

• Strong software engineering experience in one or more programming languages, including Python, Java, C++, Go, Rust, or TypeScript.
• Demonstrated experience developing backend systems, scalable services, APIs, or complex software applications.
• A clear track record of open-source contributions, preferably supported by a GitHub profile or equivalent public portfolio.
• Strong understanding of data structures, algorithms, software design principles, and debugging techniques.
• Practical experience with automated testing, code validation, and software quality assurance.
• Ability to identify and resolve complex bugs, implementation errors, and performance bottlenecks.
• Experience developing new features and improving existing codebases.
• Strong analytical thinking, problem-solving, documentation, and technical communication skills.
• Ability to work independently, follow detailed technical specifications, and deliver reproducible, verifiable solutions.
• Interest in AI systems and understanding how software engineering expertise can support AI model training and evaluation.

Must-Have Skills

• Software Engineering
• Open Source Contributions
• Backend Development and API Design
• Python, Java, C++, Go, Rust, or TypeScript
• Debugging and Troubleshooting
• Data Structures and Algorithms
• Automated Testing and Code Validation
• Code Review and Refactoring
• Performance Optimization

Good-to-Have Skills

• Experience with large-scale or legacy codebases
• Reinforcement Learning Environment Development
• Deterministic Testing and Automated…