In 1600, William Gilbert published De Magnete—the first systematic study of magnetism. He didn't just theorize; he built instruments, ran experiments, and shared what he learned so that others could go further. Three centuries later, those foundations helped power the modern world.

At Mercury, we're making a deliberate, company-wide bet on AI. Frontier users are already pushing boundaries—building agents, automating workflows, moving fast. But they're doing it in silos. This role exists to change that: to take those scattered experiments and turn them into shared infrastructure, shared context, and shared capability. The goal is a multiplier effect—where the most ambitious AI work inside Mercury lifts the velocity of everyone else.

What you'll do

You'll join a team that has already started building Mercury's internal AI platform and enablement layer. Your work will be to extend, harden, and scale what's in motion, and to help partner teams adopt it.

Extend the AI platform foundation

• Build and evolve MCP servers that connect internal systems and data sources into a coherent interface for agents and engineers.
• Expand and operate our LLM gateway infrastructure: routing, rate limiting, cost attribution, and observability across teams.
• Turn early patterns into durable defaults: shared prompt libraries, guardrails, and policy-as-code so teams can move fast safely.

Strengthen the shared company knowledge layer

• Shape and maintain structured context artifacts—clean, reliable, agent-consumable—so LLMs working in Mercury's systems can reason accurately about our domain.
• Improve internal knowledge discoverability and retrieval so both humans and agents can quickly find accurate answers.
• Partner with domain teams to standardize key sources of truth, and keep them fresh.

Enable faster prototyping and iteration across the company

• Build and refine sandbox environments and tooling that let engineers experiment with AI safely and at speed.
• Create self-service scaffolding so non-engineers—PMs, ops, finance—can prototype and deploy AI-powered workflows with minimal hand-holding.
• Build playgrounds and evaluation harnesses so internal AI agents can be tested and iterated in controlled environments before hitting production.

This list is illustrative. Priorities will shift as we learn; the right person will help choose the next highest-leverage work.

The ideal candidate

• Has 5+ years of backend development experience in complex, production systems—you've built things that other engineers depended on.
• Is fluent across programming languages and can navigate platform engineering, infrastructure, and developer tooling without needing a map.
• Has hands-on experience building LLM-powered systems—RAG pipelines, agents, eval frameworks—and has shipped at least one of these to production.
• Understands the real tradeoffs in AI deployments: cost modeling, observability, latency, and safety—not just the exciting parts.
• Is high-agency and self-directed. You can operate effectively without tightly-defined scope, find the highest-leverage work, and get it done.
• Communicates clearly across technical and non-technical audiences—you can explain what you built and why it matters.

The total rewards package at Mercury includes base salary, equity, and benefits. Our salary and equity ranges are highly competitive within the SaaS and fintech industry and are updated regularly using the most reliable compensation survey data for our industry. New hire offers are made based on a candidate’s experience, expertise, geographic location, and internal pay equity relative to peers.

Our target new hire base salary ranges for this role are the following:

• US employees (any location): $166,600 - $218,700
• Canadian employees (any location): CAD 157,400 - 206,650

Mercury values diversity & belonging and is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. All individuals seeking employment at Mercury are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected characteristic. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process for applicants with disabilities or special needs. If you need assistance, or an accommodation, please let your recruiter know once you are contacted about a role.

We use Covey as part of our hiring and / or promotional process for jobs in NYC and certain features may qualify it as an AEDT. As part of the evaluation process we provide Covey with job requirements and candidate submitted applications. We began using Covey Scout for Inbound on January 22, 2024. 

[Please see the independent bias audit report covering our use of Covey for more information.] 

#LI-ES1

ABOUT THIS OPPORTUNITY

onX is seeking a Staff Software Engineer who will contribute to meaningful, real-world outcomes that have a lasting impact for customers and the business. In this role, you’ll focus on the design, development, and scaling of our core AI/ML platforms and product-facing services as part of the AI Foundations Team, supporting the integration of cutting-edge artificial intelligence solutions across onX's product lines. You’ll take ownership of your work, collaborate closely with partners across the organization, and help move initiatives forward in an environment where priorities evolve, learning is celebrated, and you’re encouraged to keep stretching your skills. This role will report to the Director of Engineering.

WHAT YOU'LL DO
^{Essential Job Duties & Functions}

• Work on the design, development, and deployment of large-scale AI systems and services, including models, pipelines, product experiences and infrastructure.
• Help Drive the technical strategy and roadmap for AI feature development, focusing on scalability, repeatability, reliability, and performance.
• Mentor and guide other engineers in best practices and productionizing AI technologies.
• Collaborate with Product and Data Science teams to translate business problems into technical requirements and deliver high-impact AI solutions (combining LLMs, Vector Databases, ML and other technology in novel ways to serve onX’ unique audience).
• Look for opportunities to embed AI as a repeatable mechanism in daily workflows by integrating experimentation into real work, and continuously refining its use with sound judgment and validation.
• Be a leader in AI safety, ensuring AI-enabled products are aligned with our values and mission.
• Look for opportunities to embed AI as a repeatable co-pilot in daily workflows by integrating experimentation into real work, and continuously refining its use with sound judgment and validation.

WHAT YOU’LL BRING

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, or a related technical field, or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 3 years focused on building and scaling production AI/ML systems, is required.
• Expertise in building scalable backend systems.
• Deep knowledge of MLOps practices, cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP/Azure), and CI/CD pipelines for machine learning models and the common inference APIs/SDKs and frameworks.
• Experience with modern AI technologies, including Large Language Models (LLMs) and their various architectures, methods such as RAG, vector databases, and the common AI stack including TensorFlow/Keras, PyTorch, Transformers, etc.
• A strong curiosity for exploring new technologies, including AI
• A shared passion for and ability to demonstrate onX’s Company Values.
• Permanent US work authorization is a condition of employment with onX.

ADDED BONUSES

Though not required, we would be thrilled to consider candidates with any of the following:

• A history of engaging in AI development, from the early ML/NN (YOLO, Darknet) to the LLM era.
• Experience in monitoring and debugging production AI systems (inference, evals, judging, benchmarks) including cost and performance optimizations.
• Interest or experience in edge/on-device inference (MLX, JAX, transformers on TPU/NPU, etc.)
• Interest, experience or experimentation in training/fine-tuning transformer/diffusion models, dataset curation and captioning, etc.

THE ONX EXPERIENCE

onX is a distributed company with more than 400 employees across the country. We come together regularly to work in person and stay connected through regional basecamps and a culture that balances individual ownership with deep collaboration.

While we move quickly, we’re not a scrappy start-up. We operate with clear goals, structure, and frameworks that guide how we prioritize and execute. Priorities matter. While they may shift, data shapes how we evolve as our business, products, and the world around us change.

Clear priorities and structure don’t limit ownership - they make it possible. You’ll have the autonomy to define your work and make meaningful decisions within clear strategic boundaries. You’ll partner closely with others to solve complex problems and build solutions that scale across teams and platforms. Along the way, you’ll be supported with feedback, tools, and opportunities to grow your craft as you take on new challenges.

WHERE YOU CAN WORK

onX has created a thriving distributed workforce designed to foster connection, collaboration, and shared experience across several US locations. We have two HQ locations in Bozeman and Missoula, MT and established virtual workforce Basecamps in Austin, TX; Denver, CO; Kalispell, MT; Minneapolis, MN; Portland, OR; Salt Lake City, UT; and Seattle, WA.

HOW YOU’LL BE COMPENSATED

onX is committed to compensating all employees fairly and equitably for their contributions.  Applicants can expect to make between $169,000 to $211,000 upon hire. The pay range will vary based on experience, skills, certifications, and education among other factors as required in the job description. In addition, full-time onX employees are eligible for a grant of common share options with a vesting schedule and a potential annual bonus of 10% based on company performance.

WHAT WE’RE OFFERING YOU

• Competitive salaries, annual bonuses, equity, and opportunities for growth
• Comprehensive health benefits, including a no-monthly-cost medical plan
• Paid parental leave of 13 weeks for birthing parents and 5 weeks for non-birthing parents
• 401k matching at 100% for the first 3% you save and 50% from 3-5%
• Company-wide outdoor adventures and amazing outdoor industry perks
• Annual “Get Out, Get Active” funds to fuel your active lifestyle
• Flexible time away package that includes PTO, STO, VTO, and paid holidays

PERFORMANCE ESSENTIALS

In this role, success is driven by cognitive abilities such as concentration and problem-solving, essential for our computer-centric tasks. onX will explore reasonable accommodations to ensure that individuals with diverse abilities can fully engage in and contribute to the essential physical and mental functions of the job. If you need assistance or accommodation, please contact us at PC@onxmaps.com. 

Application Deadline is [day of week], [month] [day] at [0:00 pm] MST

Position open until filled. 

#LI-Remote