Early Career & University Recruiter

Mercor’s mission is to organize human intelligence for the AI economy. We build the infrastructure that enables frontier AI labs and enterprises to train, evaluate, and improve AI on real-world professional work. More than five million experts have joined our network, and we pay out over $5 million daily for their knowledge and expertise.

We built our training and evaluation infrastructure alongside the world’s leading AI labs. Now, we’re bringing those capabilities to enterprises across industries, enabling them to train, evaluate, and improve AI using their own expertise and standards. Our APEX benchmarks measure how AI performs on economically valuable work, while our enterprise evaluations and post-training capabilities turn those insights into measurable improvements across real-world workflows.

Our work sits at the intersection of frontier AI, human expertise, and real-world application. We’re solving problems few companies have encountered, with the opportunity to influence what the world’s most advanced AI systems become capable of doing. We’re looking for people who bring different perspectives, take ownership, exercise sound judgment, and hold themselves to an exceptionally high standard. You’ll have the opportunity to do consequential work alongside talented colleagues who challenge one another, collaborate openly, and share a commitment to excellence.

Mercor is profitable and recently raised a $750 million Series D at a $20 billion valuation. We work in person five days a week in San Francisco, New York, and London.

About the Role

We're looking for an Early Career & University Recruiter to build Mercor's university recruiting, early-career hiring, and internship programs from the ground up.

You'll own the strategy for how we identify, attract, and hire exceptional emerging talent across engineering, machine learning, and business functions. From developing university partnerships to creating new ways of finding talent beyond traditional recruiting channels, you'll help build the next generation of Mercor.

This is a hands-on, high-ownership role for someone who can think strategically, execute independently, and build programs that scale.

What You'll Do

• Build our early-career recruiting strategy: Develop and execute Mercor's approach to university recruiting, new-grad hiring, and internships, including target talent pools, recruiting calendars, and hiring plans

• Find exceptional emerging talent: Identify and engage high-potential students and early-career professionals through creative sourcing strategies that go beyond traditional campus recruiting and established university pipelines

• Own full-cycle recruiting: Drive sourcing, assessment, candidate engagement, and closing for intern and new-grad roles across engineering, ML, and business functions

• Build and scale our internship program: Establish the recruiting framework, selection process, and return-offer strategy, partnering with hiring managers and People to create a strong intern experience

• Create new talent pipelines: Develop initiatives such as hackathons, fellowships, student partnerships, and ambassador programs where they can meaningfully improve our ability to attract exceptional talent

• Partner with leadership: Work closely with hiring managers and functional leaders to define early-career talent needs, establish hiring standards, and align recruiting plans with business priorities

• Measure and improve outcomes: Establish the metrics and operating processes needed to evaluate program effectiveness, candidate quality, offer acceptance, and intern-to-full-time conversion

What We're Looking For

• 6+ years of recruiting experience, including meaningful ownership of university, early-career, or internship recruiting

• Demonstrated experience building or significantly transforming an early-career recruiting program, with clear ownership and measurable results

• Strong technical recruiting experience, particularly with engineering, computer science, or machine learning talent

• Exceptional sourcing creativity and the ability to identify high-potential candidates beyond traditional credentials, universities, and employer brands

• Ability to develop a strategy and independently translate it into execution without relying on established infrastructure

• Strong stakeholder management, including the ability to influence hiring managers, challenge assumptions, and drive accountability

• A data-driven approach to measuring recruiting effectiveness, improving processes, and making prioritization decisions

• Willingness to travel for university partnerships, recruiting events, and other high-impact opportunities

Nice to Haves

• Experience building early-career or university recruiting programs in a high-growth startup environment

• Experience developing nontraditional talent pipelines, technical student communities, hackathons, or fellowship programs

• Experience designing internship recruiting programs that have delivered strong intern-to-full-time conversion.

Ideal Qualities

• Agility / Adaptability - ability to move fast, pivot with business shifts, and maintain best-in-class outcomes.

• Operational Rigor - ability to bring order to an unstructured environment

• Growth Mindset - You don’t need to be an expert on AI, but you do need to have a strong desire to learn and continue learning in a rapidly evolving, frontier industry

• Commitment to the Outcome - Ownership mentality; will hold themselves accountable to an extremely high standard of work

• Love for the Craft - we are building a zero to one motion; this hire will bring a low ego attitude to the table with a genuine love for building a best-in-class talent acquisition organization

Compensation & Benefits

• Bi-annual performance bonus structure

• Generous equity grant vested over 4 years

• Up to $15k Relocation bonus

• $10K housing bonus (if you live within 0.5 miles of our office)

• $1.5K monthly stipend for meals

• $200 monthly laundry reimbursement

• $200 monthly personal wellness reimbursement

• Health, Dental, Vision insurance

Mercor is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is committed to providing equal opportunity to all employees and applicants. Mercor does not discriminate based on actual or perceived race, color, creed, religion, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, sex or gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, related medical conditions and lactation), gender identity or gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, military service and veteran status, disability, protected medical condition as defined by California or local law, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, California, or local laws and ordinances. Further, Mercor prohibits discrimination, harassment, and retaliation based on any combination of protected characteristics. This Policy applies to all areas of employment, including recruitment, hiring, training, promotion, compensation, benefits, discipline, termination, and all other privileges, terms, and conditions of employment. This Policy and the law prohibit employment discrimination against any employee or applicant based on any legally protected status.