Software Engineer - MeritFirst

5 hours ago

H1B Sponsor

Responsibilities

Build core candidate and employer product experiences.
Develop a flexible platform for creating, delivering, evaluating, and improving assessments and realistic work challenges.
Own problems end to end from user understanding and product shaping through design, implementation, deployment, observation, and iteration.
Translate complex human workflows into effective software while determining what should be automated versus supported by people.
Build consistent, interpretable, auditable, and game-resistant evaluation systems with appropriate human review and safeguards.
Connect assessment performance, employer decisions, and on-the-job outcomes to improve the product’s predictive value.
Apply AI to assessment creation, evaluation, and user experiences when it materially improves outcomes, with suitable evaluations and guardrails.
Improve architecture, testing, observability, performance, reliability, security, privacy, accessibility, and developer velocity as needed.
Set technical standards and operating practices and help identify and recruit future engineers.

Meaningful experience building and operating production software rather than only prototypes or narrowly bounded features.
Exceptional technical foundations and the ability to reason from first principles.
Ability to shape products, design systems, write and understand code, and reason about production behavior.
Depth in at least one area of the stack with sufficient breadth to follow important problems across the system.
Strong debugging skills based on forming hypotheses, following evidence, and understanding root causes.
Ability to balance delivery speed, technical judgment, foundational investment, and technical debt.
Strong product instincts and care for user experience.
Experience building production software with and without AI assistance, including the ability to inspect, test, explain, debug, and own AI-assisted code.
Clear communication and ability to make technical tradeoffs understandable to non-engineers.
Interest in MeritFirst’s mission and willingness to work with ambiguity, operate what is shipped, and help establish an early engineering organization.

Hiring process emphasizes demonstrated ability over educational pedigree, prior employers, or interview polish.
Candidates may work with and without AI assistance and experience the MeritFirst product firsthand during the process.
Early-stage environment with direct collaboration with the founder, product team, assessment experts, candidates, and employers.
Sustainable performance is valued, though building the company may sometimes require long days and exceptional intensity.

11-50 employees

8VC is a venture capital fund based in Austin, Texas. For more information, please visit www.8VC.com