Hey, it’s SemiDiffusion. A weekend special this time: 13 roles across four sourcing channels — Mercor’s AI talent platform, RemoteOK, We Work Remotely, and the a16z Build newsletter — plus one opportunity that landed straight in a reader’s inbox. Every numbered role below links to its own application page, every link was re-checked on July 4, and nothing here repeats a role from a previous SemiDiffusion issue.

If you only have five minutes: the Mercor Picks right below are all non-engineering, pay weekly, and run up to $150+/hour. A.Team’s independent PM/designer track (#10) pays $90–$170/hr and you keep 100% of your rate. Apply early if you’re interested.

🤖 Mercor — Contract Work at the Frontier Labs

Long-time readers know Mercor: one live AI interview matches you to contract work at top AI labs — fully remote, self-scheduled, paid weekly via Stripe or Wise. None of these four requires an engineering background, all are rolling applications, and all links were confirmed live on July 4.

If you’re new: I updated my resume and got an instant Mercor offer — I broke down exactly what I changed in I Updated My Resume and Got an Instant Mercor Offer.

Read that before you apply — it covers how to position yourself for the AI interview and which tracks actually pay.

1. Recruiter

A full-cycle recruiting seat at the platform reinventing the hiring process — you own end-to-end recruitment across technical and non-technical roles. Small team, big surface area.

Strong fit if you are an expert sourcer who thrives in agency or in-house environments, and want in on a platform that is re-engineering how the world gets hired.

➤ https://t.mercor.com/NcuD6

2. Sales & Marketing Expert

Design the prompts, answers, and evaluation sets that teach AI models the nuances of sales and marketing. You will be transforming your real-world pipeline war stories into the training data that powers the next generation of AI.

Strong fit if you are an expert sales or marketing operator who understands what makes a funnel work, and you want to use that deep experience to shape how AI learns to sell.

➤ https://t.mercor.com/HpT3S

3. Corporate Healthcare Professionals Survey – Healthcare Operations & Strategy Insights

A professional survey initiative at the intersection of healthcare operations and strategy — you will capture expert insights to drive high-level decision-making. Focused scope, significant industry impact.

Strong fit if you are a healthcare operations expert who thrives in analytical environments, and want to leverage your experience to surface actionable intelligence that shapes future initiatives.

➤ https://t.mercor.com/mBr6z

4. General Finance / Accounting Evaluator ($80–$120/hr)

Remote · Rolling · Paid weekly

One of Mercor’s newest postings: review AI-generated work products — documents, spreadsheets, slide decks — for accuracy, rigor, and presentation quality, and grade them with structured written feedback. Requires 5+ years in finance or accounting plus an advanced degree.

Strong fit if you’ve spent years marking up analysts’ models and decks, and can spot the error on slide 14 at a glance.

➤https://t.mercor.com/KodSe

🌍 Remote Jobs — Verified Open，Anywhere in the world

5. Growth & Success Manager @Medida AI

Remote · Posted this week

An AI startup seat that blends growth and customer success — you own activation, retention, and expansion for an AI product. Small team, big surface area.

Strong fit if you like talking to users as much as staring at funnels, and want in at an AI company before the org chart exists.

➤ https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-growth-amp-success-manager-medida-ai-1134356

6. Senior Product Designer @ Nansen.ai

The on-chain analytics platform trusted by serious crypto investors is hiring a senior product designer to make dense blockchain data feel effortless. Fully remote, and design maturity at Nansen is high — you’d be shaping a product power users live in daily.

➤ https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-senior-product-designer-nansen-ai-1128898

7. Brand & Growth Designer @ Fluxon

Fluxon builds software products for companies like Google and Stripe. This role sits at the intersection of brand and growth: visual identity, marketing assets, and sales collateral across every touchpoint, balancing day-to-day requests with larger strategic brand work. A great seat for designers who want business impact, not just pixels.

➤ https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-brand-growth-designer-fluxon-1130906

8. Product Manager @ Nearcut ($75K–$99K)

Nearcut builds booking software for barbershops across the UK and beyond — real revenue, real customers, unglamorous and profitable. A rare generalist PM seat where you’ll own outcomes end to end. Applications close July 12, 2026 — this week’s most urgent deadline.

➤ https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/nearcut-product-manager

9. AI Prompt Engineering & Evaluation (FT/PT, Will Train) @ DataAnnotation.tech

No AI experience required — they train you. Choose your own hours, full-time or part-time, evaluating and refining AI model outputs. One of the lowest-friction entries into AI work we’ve seen on WWR, and a natural first rung if the Mercor section below appeals to you but you want to test the waters first.

➤ https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/dataannotation-tech-ft-pt-remote-ai-prompt-engineering-evaluation-will-train

10. Lead Creative Strategist @ New Engen

New Engen is a performance marketing agency; this seat leads creative strategy across paid channels — briefs, hooks, iteration loops. AI-assisted creative testing is the day job now.

Strong fit if you can look at a winning ad and articulate exactly why it won, then brief the next ten.

➤ https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-lead-creative-strategist-new-engen-1134063

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This free edition gives you the same 13 roles everyone else gets. But the AI-era job market is personal. A wealth manager in Singapore and a product designer in Lisbon don’t need the same list.

On top of the curated jobs, paid subscribers get open DMs with me. Tell me about your background and what you’re optimizing for, and I’ll give you tailor-made recommendations — plus my honest read on any role you’re already eyeing. The more I learn about what you’re actually looking for, the better the matches get.

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Hey, it’s SemiDiffusion. This week’s picks span five sourcing channels: Mercor’s AI talent platform, RemoteOK, We Work Remotely, the a16z Build newsletter, and Hacker News’ brand-new “Who is hiring? (July 2026)” thread. Every numbered role below links straight to its own application page — no “browse our careers site” dead ends — and every link was re-checked on July 2. One popular listing (Reveleer’s Full Stack AI Engineer) was cut because applications closed July 1, and nothing here has appeared in a previous SemiDiffusion issue.

If you only have five minutes: the Mercor Picks right below are all non-engineering, pay weekly, and include tracks at $125–225/hour — and CoinMarketCap’s Technical AI Product Manager closes July 30. Apply early if you’re interested.

🤖 Mercor — Contract Work at the Frontier Labs

Mercor is an AI-powered talent platform that matches you to contract work at top AI labs based on one live AI interview. All roles below are fully remote, self-scheduled, and paid weekly via Stripe. These are rolling positions — not single postings with close dates.

If you’re new: I updated my resume and got an instant Mercor offer — I broke down exactly what I changed in I Updated My Resume and Got an Instant Mercor Offer. Read that before you apply — it covers how to position yourself for the AI interview and which tracks actually pay.Long-time readers know Mercor: one live AI interview matches you to contract work at top AI labs — fully remote, self-scheduled, paid weekly via Stripe. None of these three requires an engineering background, all are rolling applications, and all links were confirmed live on July 4:

1. Patient Financial Services Leader

For experts in patient billing and financial services operations, helping train healthcare AI systems.

➤ https://t.mercor.com/a8Xy0

2. Revenue-Cycle Analytics / Decision-Support / RCM Reporting Leader

A leadership-level role for people who live in revenue-cycle dashboards and decision-support reporting.

➤ https://t.mercor.com/jWdWT

3. Generalist Expert — AI Response Evaluator

Remote · Rolling · Paid weekly

Evaluate AI-generated responses across a wide range of topics — from factual accuracy to multi-step reasoning. Provide structured written feedback. Help define what “high quality” looks like for frontier model outputs. No set schedule.

Strong fit if you’re a sharp generalist who reads and writes well across domains, and can evaluate AI output with the same rigor you’d apply to your own work.

➤ https://t.mercor.com/a5sKJ/

4. UK-Based Consulting Experts

A research project with a leading foundational-model lab, built for UK management consultants. Case interviews finally pay off twice.

➤ https://t.mercor.com/7FxJZ

🌍 Remote Jobs Hiring Worldwide — Verified Open

5. Senior Product Manager, Applied AI @ Smartsheet

The publicly listed collaboration platform is hiring a senior PM to own its Applied AI product line — shipping AI inside an at-scale SaaS, with all the distribution that comes with it.

Strong fit if you’ve taken AI features from prototype to production in a B2B product and want a bigger canvas.

➤ https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-senior-product-manager-applied-ai-smartsheet-1131233

6. Product Manager @ Lively

Lively builds modern HSA and benefits products so people don’t have to trade personal wellness for financial wellness. A solid generalist PM seat at a mission-driven fintech, fully remote (US).

Strong fit if you like owning a product area end to end and can work comfortably in a regulated space.

➤ https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-product-manager-lively-1131146

7. Technical AI Product Manager @ CoinMarketCap

The front page of crypto markets wants a technically fluent AI PM. Applications close July 30, 2026 — the most time-sensitive role in this issue.

Strong fit if you can talk to both ML engineers and markets people without a translator.

➤ https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/coin-market-cap-technical-ai-product-manager

🚀 Startup & Growth-Stage Picks

8. Member of Technical Staff, Performance & Scale @ Inferact

Remote · $200K–$400K

Build the distributed systems that let vLLM serve models across thousands of accelerators with minimal latency. One of the most leveraged infra seats in AI right now.

Strong fit if distributed systems performance is your home turf and you want your work under every inference call.

➤ https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/inferact/7f934a1b-1845-4f25-8fe4-1def2b039f60

9. Tech Lead / AI Engineer / Platform Engineer Lead @ EggAI

Remote — EU, UK, Switzerland, Norway

Enterprise AI startup hiring across three senior tracks. A rare fully remote European setup with small-team ownership.

➤ https://job-boards.eu.greenhouse.io/eggai

10. Director of Sales, Enterprise @ Decagon

San Francisco · $336K–$420K OTE + equity + commission

Join the founding sales leadership team, reporting directly to the VP of Sales. You’ll build and lead an enterprise segment as Decagon scales post-Series D — hiring, coaching, and carrying the number with your team.

Strong fit if you’re a results-driven sales leader who’s built teams from single digits and still loves the deal.

➤ https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/decagon/ca69cd40-646d-44a8-a052-6f40294b123b

11. Strategic Account Director, West @ Decagon

San Francisco, Remote, Seattle, or Texas · $330K–$380K OTE + equity + commission

A highly autonomous strategic seat covering the West. You’re product-minded, scrappy, and comfortable building your own pipeline while running complex enterprise cycles with the largest accounts.

Strong fit if you’ve closed seven-figure deals with minimal air cover and prefer it that way.

➤ https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/decagon/f42e38fc-aa61-44c2-8e04-3e6d0ae5a7a3

12. Enterprise Account Executive @ Decagon

San Francisco · $260K–$320K OTE + equity + commission

A self-starter, builder-mentality seat on the GTM sales team at a company whose category (AI customer experience) is being bought right now. Early enough that you help write the playbook; late enough that logos and momentum already exist.

Strong fit if you want to accelerate your career selling a product with genuine pull, and can build pipeline without waiting for it.

➤ https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/decagon/67c794bd-e423-44b2-8b80-d7b759994cde

13. Product Manager @ Decagon

San Francisco · $232K–$290K + equity

You’ll own the roadmap for a major product area and partner directly with customers and internal teams to make Decagon’s platform more powerful and flexible. Post-Series D, the surface area is expanding fast — chat, email, voice, SMS — and every area needs an owner.

Strong fit if you’re a builder-PM who gets energy from customer conversations and ships weekly, not quarterly.

➤ https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/decagon/d790a2a2-958d-4f49-96ed-adbd68d2e6ce

14. Senior Account Executive @ Lago

Paris · Full-time

Run consultative enterprise sales for a technical product where the buyer is often an engineer. Experience in developer tools, APIs, infrastructure, billing, fintech, or usage-based platforms is the ideal profile — you’re selling the system of record for revenue.

Strong fit if you can hold your own in a technical room and turn open-source adoption into enterprise contracts.

➤ https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/lago/556a4ccb-35b4-4b10-be66-e7b265fbbc4d

Get Personalized AI Job Recommendations Every Week

This free edition gives you the same 14 roles everyone else gets. But the AI-era job market is personal. A PM in Shenzhen and a data engineer in Berlin don’t need the same list.

On top of the curated jobs, paid subscribers also get open DMs with me. Tell me about yourself, your background, what you’re optimizing for, and I’ll give you tailor-made recommendations. Flag roles you’ve already seen, and I’ll give you my honest read. Over time, your feedback makes the recommendations sharper. The more I learn about what you’re actually looking for, the better the matches get.

Paid subscribers get a separate, customized weekly jobs email. Not an algorithm.

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Read more

This week's issue spans four sourcing channels — Mercor's AI talent platform, the latest a16z Build openings, fresh picks from RemoteOK, and verified listings from We Work Remotely — with every link re-confirmed against today's index.

🤖 Mercor — Contract Work at the Frontier Labs

Mercor is an AI-powered talent platform that matches you to contract work at top AI labs based on one live AI interview. All roles below are fully remote, self-scheduled, and paid weekly via Stripe. These are rolling positions — not single postings with close dates.

If you're new: I updated my resume and got an instant Mercor offer — I broke down exactly what I changed in I Updated My Resume and Got an Instant Mercor Offer. Read that before you apply — it covers how to position yourself for the AI interview and which tracks actually pay.

1.Video Game Annotator

Label gameplay footage, mechanics, and player behavior to train models that understand interactive environments. The work is detail-heavy — tagging actions, UI states, and edge cases frame by frame — and it rewards people who actually know how games are built and played.

Strong fit if you’re a serious gamer with a sharp eye for detail and the patience to annotate consistently at scale.

Apply: https://t.mercor.com/Af0pF

2.Government Backoffice — Visual Document Understanding

Annotate scanned government forms, records, and back-office paperwork so models can read and extract structured data from messy real-world documents. Accuracy matters more than speed here — the labels you produce become the ground truth.

Strong fit if you have experience with document processing, data entry, or any role where precision with paperwork was the whole job.

Apply: https://t.mercor.com/g4HEv

3.Real Estate Appraisal — Visual Document Understanding

The same visual-document-understanding track, focused on appraisal reports, valuation documents, and property records. You’ll label the fields and layouts that teach models to parse appraisal paperwork correctly.

Strong fit if you’ve worked in real estate, appraisal, mortgage, or title and can recognize what each document is supposed to contain.

Apply: https://t.mercor.com/URAC5

4.IT Operations Manager

Run the operational backbone for AI lab contract work — systems, tooling, access, and the day-to-day infrastructure that keeps distributed contributor teams shipping.

Strong fit if you’ve managed IT operations for a remote or distributed team and like being the person who makes everything run quietly in the background.

Apply: https://t.mercor.com/kmuCS

5.Voice Actor: CX Agent Voice Cloning (USA)

Record voice samples used to build customer-experience agent voices. Clear, natural, US-English delivery is the core requirement, along with the consistency to produce clean takes across long scripts.

Strong fit if you have voice or narration experience, a quiet recording setup, and a warm, neutral American accent. (US-based only.)

Apply: https://t.mercor.com/fmUBs

6.Architecture Expert

Bring domain expertise in architecture to train and evaluate models on design reasoning, building systems, codes, and drawings. You’ll review model outputs, write reference answers, and flag where the AI gets architecture wrong.

Strong fit if you’re a practicing or trained architect who can explain not just the right answer but why it’s right.

Apply: https://t.mercor.com/Qtyht

🚀 Startup & Growth-Stage Picks

surfaces the freshest openings inside portfolio companies that have capital, momentum, and teams actively building. Links re-verified as of this issue — if a deep link has rotated, search the role title on the company's board.

7.Design Engineer — Ramp

New York City · $172K–$440K

Ramp just raised $750M at a $44B valuation and is looking for a Design Engineer who sits at the intersection of brand, product, and engineering. The work is AI-first by default: start in Claude or Cursor to explore and build, test with real customers, move to Figma for systems and polish. You’re shipping production experiences with a high bar for craft, performance, and reliability.

Strong fit if you write code and design in the same breath, and won’t compromise on either.

Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/ramp/3d81a24f-cca4-4b2b-9478-cf422adc8237

8. Chief of Staff to the CSO — EliseAI

New York City · up to $250K

EliseAI raised a $250M Series E last year at a $2B+ valuation. You’ll be the force multiplier for the Chief Strategy Officer — driving execution across the company’s highest-priority strategic initiatives, ensuring focus, momentum, and alignment as EliseAI scales to new markets.

Strong fit if you’re the person who turns strategic intent into executable cadence and has a track record of making senior leaders more effective.

Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/eliseai/f4db1afc-82e6-4dfa-91e3-6b1f59758593

9. Brand Design Director — Abridge

San Francisco or New York · up to $313K + equity

Abridge uses AI to turn doctor-patient conversations into structured clinical records — and they’re looking for someone to set a new standard for design in healthcare. The Brand Design Director will shape how Abridge looks, feels, and communicates across every user touchpoint. Systems-minded, mission-driven, exceptional taste required.

Strong fit if you’ve built brand design systems from scratch and genuinely care about the healthcare space.

Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/abridge/0de36f0e-a059-4ef1-9d33-d40fb8995a00

10. GTM Lead — Kindred

Remote · Full-time

Kindred is a home exchange travel platform — you swap your home to stay in someone else’s, instead of paying for a hotel. The model has genuine product-market fit with a community that’s grown organically.

As GTM Lead, you own non-traditional growth channels: community partnerships, platform integrations, grassroots events, BD, and referral acquisition. You’re building and testing the growth playbook from scratch.

Strong fit if you’ve built growth programs for a marketplace or community product, work well without a large team below you, and are energized by finding channels before they’re obvious.

Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/kindred/72656491-1ede-4814-bf3a-a21f18569fce

🌍 Remote Jobs Hiring Worldwide — Verified Open

11. Account Executive - Staking— Nansen

Remote (Europe/Asia preferred) · Full-time

Nansen is a blockchain analytics platform used by serious crypto investors to track on-chain activity and follow the smart money. As an AE on the staking team, you’ll own the full sales cycle for Nansen’s staking products — prospecting, demoing, and closing with institutional and professional clients across Europe and Asia.

Strong fit if you’ve sold technical or financial products, understand crypto and web3 natively, and can hold a credible conversation about staking with sophisticated buyers.

Apply: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/nansen/jobs/5983629004

12. Remote Customer Support Technician — SkySlope

Remote (US) · $24.50/hr · Full-time · Benefits included

SkySlope is the transaction management platform used by roughly 300,000 real estate agents. This is a support technician role — not a customer-success upsell seat. You’re solving real problems via email, chat, and phone, on a 4×10 schedule (four days, ten hours each).

The comp is hourly with full benefits: medical, dental, vision, 401k match, and paid parental leave. A stable remote role with real infrastructure behind it.

Strong fit if you want a fully remote, benefits-included position with a structured schedule and a product that’s deeply embedded in a real industry workflow.

Apply: https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-customer-support-technician-skyslope-1129688

Get Personalized AI Job Recommendations Every Week

This free edition gives you the same 14 roles everyone else gets. But the AI-era job market is personal. A PM in Shenzhen and a data engineer in Berlin don’t need the same list.

On top of the curated jobs, paid subscribers also get open DMs with me. Tell me about yourself, your background, what you’re optimizing for, and I’ll give you tailor-made recommendations. Flag roles you’ve already seen, and I’ll give you my honest read. Over time, your feedback makes the recommendations sharper. The more I learn about what you’re actually looking for, the better the matches get.

Paid subscribers get a separate, customized weekly jobs email. Not an algorithm. Not a keyword match. If you’ve been reading semidiffusion for free and getting value from it, this is the moment to convert. The job market moves fast. Having someone in your corner tracking it in real time is worth more than another browser tab of job board bookmarks.

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See you next week. And if you applied to anything from this list, reply and tell me. I want to know what’s landing.

Welcome back, nomads.

The market shifted again this week — and the most interesting movement isn’t at the big labs hiring full-time. It’s in contract work: remote, self-scheduled, paid weekly, no relocation, no interview gauntlet. So this issue leads with a dedicated Mercor section, then the usual AI-startup and worldwide-remote picks.

Let’s get into it.

🤖 Mercor — Contract Work at the Frontier Labs

Mercor isn't a single employer. It's an AI-powered talent platform that matches you to contract work at top AI labs based on one live AI interview. Every role below is fully remote, self-scheduled, and paid weekly via Stripe. These are sourced independently and tracked separately from the job board further down.

One thing worth saying up front: if you've been eyeing AI freelance income alongside the job hunt, Mercor is still the most reliable path I've found to consistent contractor pay as a remote worker. I documented four months and $37,000 of it in the Hands-On Mercor Playbook — read that first if you haven't.

Mercor is not a single employer. It's an AI-powered talent platform that matches you to contract work at top AI labs based on a live AI interview. All roles are fully remote, self-scheduled, and paid weekly via Stripe.

1. Generalist Expert - Mercor

The catch-all role: broad knowledge, sharp writing, and an eye for where models break. The easiest on-ramp if you're new to the platform.

Apply: https://t.mercor.com/a5sKJ

2.Gamers - Mercer

Remote · hourly · flexible. Record high-quality gameplay — with screen capture and input logging — to help train next-generation AI models that learn from real player behavior. Ideal if you already game and have a reliable PC.

Strong fit if you game daily and want to finally get paid for it.

Apply: https://t.mercor.com/c1t6g

3.Shopify Expert - Mercor

Remote (Contract). Looking for people with hands-on experience using Shopify’s agent to support AI lab research and evaluation tasks.

Strong fit if you’ve built or managed Shopify stores at a technical level and want to apply that expertise to AI training work.

Apply: https://t.mercor.com/oYSiL

4. Procurement / Vendor Management Evaluator — Mercor

Remote (Contract) · $80–$120/hr. Review and assess AI-generated procurement and vendor management documents — reports, spreadsheets, slide decks — for accuracy, rigor, and domain quality. 5+ years of relevant professional experience required.

Strong fit if you’ve spent years in strategic sourcing, vendor contracts, or supply chain and want to monetize that expertise on a flexible schedule.

Apply: https://t.mercor.com/E7Ezd

5. General Sales / GTM Evaluator — Mercor

Remote (Contract). Evaluate AI-generated sales and GTM work products, identify factual and presentation errors, and provide structured written feedback. 5+ years in Sales or GTM required.

Strong fit if you’ve run sales cycles or built GTM motions and want a remote, flexible engagement that values your hard-won intuition.

Apply: https://t.mercor.com/EfIbp

🚀 AI Startup Jobs

6. GTM Recruiter — HappyRobot

SF · up to $250K

HappyRobot (a16z + Base10, $60M+ raised, YC S23) builds AI workers that run enterprise voice, email, and workflow operations autonomously. You’ll partner directly with founders and hiring managers to hire across Growth Marketing, Demand Gen, Sales, CS, Partnerships, and RevOps.

Strong fit if you’ve scaled GTM teams at a fast-moving B2B startup.

Apply:https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/happyrobot/jobs/qpNaFDi-gtm-recruiter

7. Senior PM, Growth — Nourish

NYC · $175K–$245K

Nourish just raised a $100M Series C to scale its AI-native nutrition healthcare system. Live in all 50 states, hundreds of thousands of patients. You’ll own how patients discover Nourish and begin their journey — user acquisition, reactivation, and sustainable new channels across web and mobile.

Strong fit if you’ve built consumer acquisition systems in healthcare or health-adjacent products.

Apply: https://jobs.thrivecap.com/companies/nourish/jobs/67753215-senior-product-manager-growth

8. Head of Product Marketing — Mixpanel

SF · up to $421K

Lead the Global PMM function at one of the most established analytics platforms in the market. You’ll own positioning, messaging, and GTM strategy for the core platform and future innovations. The company is leaning hard into AI-era product analytics.

Strong fit if you’ve led PMM across both PLG and sales-led motions at a product analytics or developer-first company.

Apply: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/mixpanel/jobs/7974980

🌍 Remote Jobs Hiring Worldwide — Verified Open

9. Remote Customer Support Technician — SkySlope

Remote (US) · $24.50/hr · full benefits SkySlope builds the transaction software behind ~300,000 real estate agents and 8 of the 15 largest U.S. brokerages — and its 24/7 team is the front line for all of them. You'll resolve tickets across email, chat, and phone, troubleshoot technical issues end to end, and become a real subject-matter expert on the platform, working a 4x10 schedule (four 10-hour shifts a week) with medical/dental/vision, a 401(k) match, and paid parental leave. Strong fit if you've got call-center or tech-support experience, type 40+ WPM, and want a stable, benefits-backed remote seat rather than gig work.

Apply: https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-customer-support-technician-skyslope-1129688

10. Product Manager — Nearcut

Remote · $75K–$99K · Deadline: July 12

B2B SaaS for barbershops and salons. You’ll own the product spec process, use AI tools thoughtfully, and partner closely with a lean engineering team. High ownership, direct user relationships, small team.

Strong fit if you’re an early-to-mid-career PM who wants real scope at a bootstrapped startup.

Apply: https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/nearcut-product-manager

Get Personalized AI Job Recommendations Every Week

The free edition gives you the same curated list everyone sees. But the AI-era job market is personal. A PM in Shenzhen and a data engineer in Berlin don’t need the same list.

Paid subscribers get a customized weekly jobs email. Not an algorithm. Not a keyword match. I take your background, target roles, preferred geographies, and compensation expectations, and build a shortlist tailored to you. Tell me what you’ve already seen — I’ll give you my honest read. Over time, your feedback makes the recommendations sharper.

If you’ve been reading semidiffusion for free and finding value in it, this is the moment to convert. The job market moves fast. Having someone tracking it in real time — in your corner — is worth more than another browser tab of job board bookmarks.

This week's drop — links re-verified against today's index. If a deep link has rotated, search the role title on the company's board.

🅰️ a16z BUILD — the June 16 drop (freshest)

1. Chief of Staff to the CPO — Carta
SF · up to $280K. Embed directly with Carta’s CPO as the connective tissue between the product org and the company — strategic projects, ops backbone, and exec leverage. Strong fit if you’re an operator who turns chaos into cadence. Apply: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/carta/jobs/7743056003

2. Strategic Program Manager, Marketing — Figma
SF · works directly with the CMO. Shape and drive marketing strategy, run planning cycles, and roll out Figma’s team-wide AI transformation. Strong fit if you’re equal parts strategy and operational excellence. Apply: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/figma/jobs/5978327004

3. Engineering Manager, Rider Growth — Waymo
Mountain View · up to $310K. Lead a cross-functional squad driving rider acquisition, activation, and lifetime value for the leading robotaxi. Strong fit if you’ve scaled growth-eng teams and love a metrics-owned mandate. Apply: https://careers.withwaymo.com/jobs/engineering-manager-rider-growth-mountain-view-california-united-states

4. Staff Product Manager, Launched Effects — Anduril
Costa Mesa. Own the vision and roadmap for Anduril’s fixed-wing drone portfolio, working with the GM and Chief Engineer to decide what gets built and when. Strong fit if you want hardware-meets-software PM with real mission stakes. Apply: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/andurilindustries/jobs/5164343007

5. Enterprise Account Executive — Sprig
SF/NYC · $300K–$340K. Own the full enterprise cycle for six-/seven-figure ARR deals at an agentic-AI research startup, reporting to the Head of Revenue. Strong fit if you turn exec meetings into closed-won. Apply: https://jobs.accel.com/companies/sprig/jobs/68166152-enterprise-account-executive

6. GTM Lead — Kindred
Remote. Own non-traditional growth — community partnerships, integrations, grassroots activation — for the 300K-member home-swap network. Strong fit if you find what works, build the playbook, and scale it. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/kindred/72656491-1ede-4814-bf3a-a21f18569fce

7. Founding Growth Lead — Lassie
SF. Build the repeatable channels that scale an AI doctor’s-office startup (just raised $35–47M), partnering with a CEO who ran Robinhood’s first growth. Strong fit if you connect product, data, and marketing into compounding demand. Apply: https://www.builtinsf.com/job/founding-growth-lead/8773104 (re-confirm — Built In mirror)

8. Chief of Staff to the Co-Founder & CPO — Adaptive Security
NYC. Run the office and R&D org across eng/product/design at the fastest-growing AI-cyber company (a16z; the only AI-cyber bet from both OpenAI and NVIDIA). Strong fit if you want a do-everything operator seat. Apply (board): https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/adaptivesecurity

9. Forward Deployed Engineer — Pryzm
Boston / NYC / DC. Equally at home in a terminal and a customer briefing — deploy AI that helps teams win in the federal ecosystem. Strong fit if you like the boundary between product and the hardest operational problems. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/pryzm/22f2fab1-7f66-43d2-a268-40e2d25fe173

10. Product Engineer — Reducto
SF. Own Reducto Studio, the Next.js app that makes document parsing usable by anyone, at the team teaching vision models to read enterprise docs. Strong fit if you’re a product-minded builder. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/reducto/118e1eed-9b9e-4550-9e33-f6363c593c2b

🌍 Remote OK

11. Staff Product Designer — Pulley
~$125K–$150K, remote. Design delightful financial-services products at the cap-table platform that makes starting a company easier. Strong fit if you want staff IC scope without managing. Apply: https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-staff-product-designer-pulley-1128426

12. Senior Product Designer — Nansen.ai
Remote (Asia/Europe). Shape Nansen’s blockchain-analytics ecosystem — Points & Rewards, web3 activation, agentic experiences. Strong fit if you turn dense data into clarity. Apply: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/nansen/jobs/5700548004 (canonical; found via RemoteOK)

13. AI Engineer — Fastino.ai
Remote. Build efficient, specialized LLMs at the team behind GLiNER (5M+ downloads; NVIDIA, Meta, Airbnb), $25M seed. Strong fit if you want frontier work on a small elite team. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/fastino-ai/d0fe2e39-6cf2-4972-8266-461bd447468a

14. Lead AI Engineer & Technical Architect — Bold Business
Remote. Set the bar for production RAG/agent systems for clients like AT&T, JP Morgan, Verizon. Strong fit if you’ve shipped production AI end-to-end. Apply: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/boldbusiness/jobs/4239340009

15. Staff Machine Learning Engineer — Fullscript
Remote · $97K–$183K. Lead clinician-facing LLM features at an industry-leading health-tech company. Strong fit if you want clinically useful AI with autonomy. Apply: https://jobs.lever.co/fullscript/21ff4b32-a9c6-4e29-a3a2-1c9d2d65bba4

16. Senior Product Designer, AI Manager Experience — Ada
Remote. Design how humans supervise AI agents — discovery with CX leaders, then clean flows from ambiguity. Strong fit if you’ve shipped complex, systems-driven products (5+ yrs). Apply: https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/ada-senior-product-designer-ai-manager-experience

17. Product Manager — Welocalize
Remote. Lead discovery and user research, partnering with eng/QA on AI-powered localization at scale. Strong fit for a discovery-driven PM who lives between users and builders. Apply: https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/welocalize-product-manager

18. Head of Marketing — North Spore
Remote. Own the full marketing function for a fast-growing consumer brand. Strong fit if you’re a player-coach marketer who can both set strategy and ship. Apply: https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/north-spore-llc-head-of-marketing

Get Personalized AI Job Recommendations Every Week

This free edition gives you the same 20 roles everyone else gets. But the AI-era job market is personal. A PM in Shenzhen and a data engineer in Berlin don’t need the same list.

On top of the curated jobs, paid subscribers also get open DMs with me. Tell me about yourself, your background, what you’re optimizing for, and I’ll give you tailor-made recommendations. Flag roles you’ve seen elsewhere and I’ll give you my honest read. Over time, your feedback makes the recommendations sharper. The more I learn about what you’re actually looking for, the better the matches get.

Paid subscribers get a separate, customized weekly jobs email. Here’s how it works:

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I take your background, your target roles, your preferred geographies, and your compensation expectations, and I build a shortlist that’s actually tailored to you. Not an algorithm. Not a keyword match. A human who understands both the AI talent market and the companies behind the listings, filtering for fit.

This is the part of semidiffusion that doesn’t scale, which is exactly why it’s behind the paywall. I can only do this for a small number of people, and I want to do it well.

If you’ve been reading semidiffusion for free and getting value from it, this is the moment to convert. The job market moves fast. Having someone in your corner who’s tracking it in real time is worth more than another browser tab of job board bookmarks.

See you next week. And if you applied to anything from this list, reply and tell me. I want to know what’s landing.

This article is part of semidiffusion’s weekly job posting series, covering remote jobs, AI startup hiring, and digital nomad career opportunities in 2026. We verify every listing within seven days of publication and provide direct apply links. For personalized job recommendations and open DM access, upgrade to a paid subscription at www.semidiffusion.com.

Welcome back, nomads!

If you’ve been anywhere near r/mercor_ai or the “Who is hiring?” threads lately, you’ve felt it: the AI job market has split into two. On one side, the gig dashboard — log in, grab a task, get paid by the hour, get deactivated by an automated flag. On the other, the “actual seats” — applied-AI engineers, forward-deployed builders, founding hires — pulling $200K–$440K+, remote-first, with equity and leverage.

This newsletter exists to put you on the second side. Twenty roles, links included, current the week of June 13, 2026 . Every link points at the company’s live careers board so it won’t rot mid-week.

A quick market read first: forward-deployed engineering is now the fastest-growing job in AI — postings up roughly 10x in 18 months — and “the person who sits with the customer and makes the model actually work” is the most valuable nomad on the board.

Let’s get into it.

AI Startup Jobs — Founder-Led, Hiring Now

1. Forward Deployed Engineer — HappyRobot

HappyRobot is the AI-native OS for supply chain, and the FDE is its highest-leverage seat: you embed with logistics enterprises, watch how brokers and carriers actually work, and ship Python integrations that turn manual phone-and-email ops into autonomous voice AI workers. You’re also the loudest signal back into product. Strong fit if you pair real engineering with customer instinct. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/happyrobot.ai/afd99ef3-78a8-47a1-8566-04f1cf73939d

2. Machine Learning Engineer — HappyRobot

Own the speech and LLM models that make HappyRobot’s AI workers reliable enough to run mission-critical freight ops — production ML where a hallucination has a dollar cost. Strong fit if you’ve shipped speech or LLM systems that real businesses depend on. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/happyrobot.ai/46cff020-a295-4464-a062-94639689654e

3. Product Designer — HappyRobot

Design the cockpit enterprises use to deploy and supervise an entire AI workforce — a rare 0-to-1 surface where the user is an ops manager betting their P&L on your UI. Direct founder access, fast cycles. Strong fit if you make dense B2B tools feel obvious. Apply:https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/happyrobot.ai/d8724b4b-a974-40aa-9982-8c5cd1de8282

4. Technical Recruiter — HappyRobot

A Series B rocketship hiring across 60+ roles needs someone who can actually close senior engineers and operators — this is the seat that builds the team building the company. Strong fit if you’ve recruited technical talent at a fast-scaling startup and love the chase. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/happyrobot.ai/ce944a16-b6eb-4d43-96ee-8da48b4dea49

5. Enterprise Account Executive — HappyRobot

With 70+ enterprise logistics customers and a product that lands and expands, the Enterprise AE closes the next wave of brokers and 3PLs on real inbound. Strong fit if you’ve sold complex SaaS into supply chain and want equity in a category that’s compounding. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/happyrobot.ai/db68a556-d010-4b69-a463-aa567065a56d

6. Founding Engineer — Town

Town just raised a $55M Series A (a16z + Forerunner) to build the personal AI assistant that works like a chief of staff. Founded by ex-Plaid CTO Jean-Denis Greze and ex-Google/Dropbox Tony Vincent, the founding-engineer seat is in-person in SF five days a week — high intensity, founder-level equity. Strong fit if you’ve built large production systems and want a true ground-floor ticket. Apply: https://www.town.com/careers

7. Growth Strategist — HappyRobot

HappyRobot is scaling fast across 70+ enterprise logistics customers, and the Growth Strategist owns the experiments — acquisition, activation, and the funnel that turns inbound curiosity into deployed AI workers. Strong fit if you’re a data-driven growth operator who’s run paid, lifecycle, and product-led motions at a startup. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/happyrobot.ai/e5fdd730-d149-45b4-8ea4-a2898e484673

8. Account Manager — Mixpanel

Grow and retain the accounts already running Mixpanel — expansion, renewals, and turning happy teams into bigger contracts. Strong fit if you’ve carried a post-sale number in SaaS and prefer compounding relationships over cold logos. Apply: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/mixpanel/jobs/7246274

Remote Jobs Hiring Worldwide — Verified Open This Week

9. AI Engineer — Fastino.ai

Fastino is building specialized, efficient LLMs — not another general chatbot — with a team of alumni from Google Research, Apple, Stanford, and Cambridge. Fully remote. Strong fit if you want frontier model work on a small, deeply technical team without relocating. Apply: https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-ai-engineer-fastino-ai-1130360

10. Staff Machine Learning Engineer — Fullscript

Remote, ~$97K–$183K band. Own ML at scale across a large health-and-wellness commerce platform — recommendations, search, clinical personalization. Strong fit if you’ve run staff-level ML in production and want scope without a move. Apply: https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-staff-machine-learning-engineer-fullscript-1130924

11. Engineering Manager, AI (Fleet Management) — HONK

Lead the AI team behind real-time roadside-assistance and fleet ops — dispatch, ETA, and routing intelligence running 24/7. Fully remote. Strong fit if you’ve managed ML teams shipping logistics or marketplace systems. (Confirm the exact employer on the listing.) Apply: https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-engineering-manager-ai-fleet-management-amp-honk-spotify-1131520

12. Senior Product Designer, AI Manager Experience — Ada

Remote. Design how humans supervise AI agents at Ada — run discovery with CX leaders and end users, then turn ambiguous problems into clean flows and conceptual models. Strong fit if you’ve got 5+ years on complex, systems-driven products and want to define a brand-new interaction paradigm. Apply: https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/ada-senior-product-designer-ai-manager-experience

13. Product Manager — Welocalize

Remote. Lead discovery and user research across teams and partner with engineering and QA on solution design for AI-powered localization at scale. Strong fit if you’re a discovery-driven PM who likes operating between users and builders. Apply: https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/welocalize-product-manager

14. Software Engineer, Analytics — Bayesian Health

Remote. Clinical AI that catches sepsis and patient deterioration early — analytics engineering with genuine stakes. Strong fit if you want your work to save lives, not optimize ad clicks, and can stay rigorous with messy health data. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/bayesianhealth

15. Senior AI/ML Engineer (Web3) — Nansen

~$105K–$108K, remote. Build ML on top of Nansen’s blockchain graph — wallet labeling, signals, and models that move markets. Strong fit if you pair real ML chops with genuine curiosity about crypto data. Apply: https://web3.career/senior-ai-ml-engineer-nansen/99632

16. Senior AI Engineer (Python & LLM) — Lemon.io

~$120K, fully remote. Build LLM-backed production systems for a profitable, vetted-talent marketplace. Strong fit if you know exactly when an LLM is wrong, move fast without shipping slop, and have built large systems before. Apply: https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-senior-ai-engineer-python-llm-engineer-lemon-io-1093400

Get Personalized AI Job Recommendations Every Week

This free edition gives you the same 20 roles everyone else gets. But the AI-era job market is personal. A PM in Shenzhen and a data engineer in Berlin don’t need the same list.

On top of the curated jobs, paid subscribers also get open DMs with me. Tell me about yourself, your background, what you’re optimizing for, and I’ll give you tailor-made recommendations. Flag roles you’ve seen elsewhere and I’ll give you my honest read. Over time, your feedback makes the recommendations sharper. The more I learn about what you’re actually looking for, the better the matches get.

Paid subscribers get a separate, customized weekly jobs email. Here’s how it works:

Subscribe now

I take your background, your target roles, your preferred geographies, and your compensation expectations, and I build a shortlist that’s actually tailored to you. Not an algorithm. Not a keyword match. A human who understands both the AI talent market and the companies behind the listings, filtering for fit.

This is the part of semidiffusion that doesn’t scale, which is exactly why it’s behind the paywall. I can only do this for a small number of people, and I want to do it well.

If you’ve been reading semidiffusion for free and getting value from it, this is the moment to convert. The job market moves fast. Having someone in your corner who’s tracking it in real time is worth more than another browser tab of job board bookmarks.

See you next week. And if you applied to anything from this list, reply and tell me. I want to know what’s landing.

This article is part of semidiffusion’s weekly job posting series, covering remote jobs, AI startup hiring, and digital nomad career opportunities in 2026. We verify every listing within seven days of publication and provide direct apply links. For personalized job recommendations and open DM access, upgrade to a paid subscription at www.semidiffusion.com.

I want to walk you through exactly what happened, why it happened, and how you can engineer the same result for yourself. Because once you understand the system on the other side of the screen, getting matched to the right project stops feeling like a lottery and starts feeling like a craft.

This issue is free. The full prompt library, the resume template I now use, and the live “what’s working this month” updates live on the paid side. If you’ve been on the fence about upgrading, this is the issue I’d point you to first — because if even one of the sections below saves you a single rejection, you’ll have made back the subscription many times over.

Let’s get into it.

The offer that landed in my inbox before I even closed the tab

I’ll start with the moment itself, because it still feels strange to me.

I had spent maybe an hour the night before rewriting parts of my profile. Nothing dramatic — I didn’t add new experience, I didn’t take a new course, I didn’t sit a new assessment. I just changed the way my existing work was described. I rephrased my role, restructured my projects section, swapped out a few generic skill keywords for more specific technical ones, and re-uploaded a cleaner version of my resume.

The next morning I logged in to double-check that everything had saved. Before I had even finished scrolling, an offer notification appeared. An hourly project, in my domain, at a rate I was happy with, with the “instant offer” badge on it. Meaning: no live interview, no scheduling, no waiting for a recruiter to review me. Mercor’s matching system had already decided I was a fit, and the client had already pre-approved profiles that scored above a certain threshold.

I want to say it was luck. But I had been on the platform for weeks before this with a profile that, on paper, described exactly the same person. The version of me that got the instant offer was not a more qualified version. It was a better-described version.

That distinction matters more than almost anything else I’m going to tell you in this newsletter, so I want to put it in bold and let it sit on the page for a second:

Mercor is not evaluating you. Mercor is evaluating the document that represents you. And that document is being read by an AI, not a recruiter.

Once I internalized that, everything about how I approached the platform changed. The work I did didn’t become more impressive. The story I told about it did.

In the rest of this newsletter, I want to break down what’s actually happening behind the scenes, what specifically I changed in my resume and profile, the prompt sequence I now use to do this for every new role I target, and where I’m taking this next — including a Claude Code skill I’m starting to prototype that would automate the whole loop.

The thing nobody tells you: Mercor uses AI on both sides of the table

When most people think about Mercor, they think about the assessments. The recorded interviews. The little technical challenges. That’s the part of the experience that feels like the evaluation, so naturally that’s where people focus their effort.

But here’s the part that took me a long time to understand: those assessments are the second step. The first step — the one that decides whether you ever even see a role — is a matching layer. And that matching layer is doing two things, both of them with AI.

The first thing it does is parse every job description into a structured representation: required skills, preferred skills, domain, seniority, language requirements, project shape, rate band. The second thing it does is parse every candidate profile into the same kind of representation, then runs a similarity match. If you and the role score above a threshold, you’re surfaced. If you score above an even higher threshold, you get an instant offer with no human gate in between.

This has two very practical implications.

The first is that the parsing of your resume matters as much as the content. If the AI can’t extract a clean “Skills: Python, SQL, causal inference, Bayesian methods” line from your PDF, then it doesn’t matter that all of those words are technically somewhere in your bullet points. The system never gets to see them. PDFs with images of text, weird two-column layouts, custom fonts that don’t embed properly, headers that confuse the parser — all of these silently destroy your match score without you ever knowing.

The second implication is that you are, in effect, optimizing for a search engine. You don’t need to game it dishonestly — the assessments and the actual work will quickly filter out anyone who oversold themselves. But you do need to make sure that the keywords, framings, and structural cues that the AI is looking for are present, prominent, and parseable. Most people are losing matches not because they aren’t qualified, but because their resume is written for a 2015 human recruiter and not a 2026 LLM.

I think this is the single biggest gap between people who get instant offers on Mercor and people who don’t. It’s not talent. It’s not luck. It’s that one group has figured out they’re writing for a machine reader and the other group hasn’t.

Once you accept that, the entire game becomes: how do I make my profile maximally legible to an AI that is trying to decide if I belong in a specific project? And the answer to that question, it turns out, is something you can solve with another AI.

What I actually changed (and why each change works)

Here is the concrete edit list. I’m not going to bury the lede behind a paywall on this part because I want you to be able to make these changes today, even if you never upgrade.

Change one: I reframed my role. My old summary led with my job title and industry. The new one leads with the methods I use. Instead of “Marketing Data Scientist with five years of experience,” it reads as a person whose core competencies are mathematical modeling, statistics, causal inference, optimization, and structured reasoning — who happens to have applied those skills in a marketing context. Same person. Completely different match signal. The matcher cares about what you can do, not what your previous employer called your seat.

Change two: I built a real projects section, and made it the biggest section on the page. This is the change that, if I had to pick one, made the biggest difference. I took work I had already done at past jobs and at Mercor and turned each one into a discrete project with a name, a one-line description of the technical approach, and a one-line description of the outcome. Budget optimization became “constrained optimization across a fixed-budget allocation problem, modeled in Python, reduced cost-per-acquisition by X%.” Causal analysis became “experiment design and statistical inference on a multi-arrm test, using difference-in-differences to isolate treatment effect.” Each project is a dense little bundle of keywords plus evidence that I actually executed.

The matcher loves this format because it’s exactly what a job description looks like — a problem, a method, a result — just from the candidate’s side of the table. It’s the only resume section that maps one-to-one onto what the AI is comparing against.

Read more

If you’re an AI-powered nomad, you’ve felt this gap. You’re a researcher in Beijing weighing a Bay Area infra startup. An engineer in Lisbon eyeing a stealth Series A in Tel Aviv. A PM in Shenzhen who wants to know what’s actually open at the frontier AI companies this week — not what was open three months ago when some aggregator last crawled the listing.

The opportunities you actually want move in days. The tools you have to find them are stuck in 2019.

Traditional job boards give you volume. What they don’t give you is context. They don’t tell you that the ex-CEO/CTO of Twitter is quietly hiring his founding AI team in Palo Alto. They don’t tell you that an autonomous-swarm defense startup just opened a fully remote Forward Deployed Engineer slot. They don’t tell you that Spotify is staffing a brand-new “AI Fleet Management” engineering org with a worldwide remote hire.

Context is what separates a job listing from an opportunity.

That’s what semidiffusion is building. In a 2026 job market where remote work listings churn weekly and AI startup roles close in days, I do the work that job boards won’t: I verify that the role is actually open right now, I trace the funding and the founders, and I tell you why the opportunity matters — not just that it exists.

This is the May 10 Job Posting edition. Two categories, twenty roles, every single one verified open within the past seven days.

AI Startup Jobs — Founder-Led, Hiring Now

These roles come from founder-led companies actively scaling their teams this week. Every company below is funded, building, and visibly recruiting right now. The window on these is narrow: startup hiring moves fast, and most of these roles will close in days, not months.

1. Member of Technical Staff, AI — Parallel Web Systems

Parag Agrawal — yes, the ex-Twitter CEO/CTO — is building Parallel as an AI-native web platform out of SF / Palo Alto. The MTS-AI seat is a foundational engineering role: shape model architecture, define how Parallel’s agents interact with the open web, and own systems other startups will eventually build on top of. If you wanted a “founding-team-with-real-distribution” bet, this is one of the few in 2026. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/parallel/e15b451f-8c56-4747-a1b6-1f2c0fa47ef3

2. Senior AI Engineer — Doctronic

Doctronic is building AI-augmented primary care, and this senior engineering hire owns the model layer that sits between physicians and patients. NYC-based with a small team — meaningful equity, real product surface. If you’re an ML engineer who has been waiting for a healthcare role that actually ships product (not just papers), this is the one. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/doctronic/a1f7662b-af9c-4705-b168-9ca12c3854ce

3. Forward Deployed Engineer — Swarm Aero

Swarm Aero is building autonomous swarming aerial systems for the US military. This Forward Deployed Engineer role is fully remote and acts as the bridge between Swarm’s software stack and operators in the field. You’ll embed with mission teams, write code that flies, and ship updates that matter inside hours, not quarters. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/swarmaero/60050a43-819f-41fd-a02b-a652d7461dce

4. Founding Machine Learning Engineer — Shepherd

Shepherd has quietly become the AI-native insurance carrier for the construction industry. The Founding ML Engineer slot in SF means you own the underwriting models from the ground up — the loss data, the feature pipeline, the agentic risk assessment. Insurance is one of the largest, slowest verticals on earth, and Shepherd is the AI-native incumbent in waiting. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/shepherd/797316b4-bdcc-4c0c-8bc2-46d4648db240

5. Agent Product Manager — Notch

Notch is building production AI agents out of Ramat Gan, Israel — the same talent pool that produced Wiz, Lightricks, and most of the world’s enterprise security infra. The Agent PM role is the rare PM seat where you actually define the agent’s behavior, evaluation harness, and customer-facing surface area. If you’ve been a PM for an LLM-wrapping product and want the real thing, look here. Apply: https://notch.cx/careers/agent-product-manager

6. Founding Talent Lead — Conduit Health

Conduit Health is scaling a clinical network and needs a Founding Talent Lead in NYC to build the recruiting engine before the company hits Series B. This is a “build the function from scratch” role — you set the bar, the comp bands, the loop. Strong fit if you’ve recruited at a healthtech that grew from 30 to 300. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/conduit-health/6afbd685-f821-4dd6-b486-1a877168aa38

7. Senior Software Engineer, Infrastructure — Sift

Sift is building telemetry infra for hard-tech companies — think the observability layer for rockets, robots, and reactors. This Marina Del Rey-based role owns the ingestion pipeline that processes millions of sensor channels. If you’ve been doing distributed systems at a hyperscaler and want hard tech without leaving the SoCal lifestyle, this is a clean fit. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/siftstack/64da755e-5cd8-4e65-a475-fdc6055fa33b

8. Forward Deployed Engineer — PointOne

PointOne is the vertical AI platform for legal operations, and the FDE role in NYC is the highest-leverage seat in the company. You sit inside law firms, watch the workflow, and ship custom integrations that turn $800/hour billable work into $80/hour AI work. You’ll also be the loudest signal back into product. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/pointone/834a8648-5581-4d69-80cb-41382928d220

9. Founding Account Executive — Hanover Park

Hanover Park is building modern infrastructure for fund administration, and the Founding AE in NYC will close the first wave of mid-market hedge fund and private credit clients. Strong fit if you sold to CFOs or fund ops at Carta, Allvue, or Addepar — you’ll have inbound from day one and equity that matters. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/hanover-park/59a752d8-5608-4788-a67c-e2ece03e29b7

10. Lead Product Designer — Sandbar

Sandbar is building wearable AI audio hardware out of NYC — small team, real device, shipping. The Lead Product Designer role owns the entire app surface plus a meaningful slice of the hardware UX. If you’ve been designing software all your career and want a product you can hold in your hand, this is one of the cleanest hardware-software design roles open this week. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sandbar/f9d9661c-526c-42e1-9171-17c48e5e66f9

Remote Jobs Hiring Worldwide — Verified Open This Week

These ten roles were all posted on May 10, 2026 and verified live against the source job pages. Every link below points to the canonical RemoteOK posting, which then routes you to the company’s own application system. Worldwide remote, no relocation expected.

1. Engineering Manager, AI Fleet Management & Honk — Spotify

Spotify is staffing a brand-new engineering org around AI fleet management — the systems that manage Spotify’s growing fleet of internal AI services. EM role, worldwide remote, real budget. Strong fit if you’ve managed an SRE or platform team at a consumer-scale company. Apply: https://remoteOK.com/remote-jobs/remote-engineering-manager-ai-fleet-management-amp-honk-spotify-1131520

2. Senior Manager, Government & Industry Affairs Operations — VGW

VGW (the Australian gaming giant behind Chumba and Global Poker) is hiring a senior ops manager to handle government and industry affairs across multiple jurisdictions. Worldwide remote, regulatory-heavy, high-leverage role. Apply: https://remoteOK.com/remote-jobs/remote-senior-manager-government-industry-affairs-operations-vgw-1131518

3. People Operations Lead — Defense Unicorns

Defense Unicorns is the open-source DevSecOps company building Kubernetes-native software for the US Department of Defense. People Ops Lead role, fully remote, high-trust environment. Strong fit if you’ve done People Ops at a fast-growing engineering org. Apply: https://remoteOK.com/remote-jobs/remote-people-operations-lead-defense-unicorns-1131517

4. Web Development Specialist — Marketers in Demand

Hands-on full-stack role at a remote-first agency. You’ll build and maintain client websites across modern stacks. Worldwide remote — this one is friendly to nomads in non-US time zones. Apply: https://remoteOK.com/remote-jobs/remote-web-development-specialist-marketers-in-demand-1131516

5. Principal Marketing Analytics Manager — Greenhouse

Greenhouse (the recruiting platform) is hiring a Principal-level marketing analytics manager. Senior IC track, worldwide remote, owning the attribution stack and the experimentation framework. Apply: https://remoteOK.com/remote-jobs/remote-principal-marketing-analytics-manager-greenhouse-1131515

6. Sales Development Representative — Kiavi

Kiavi (formerly LendingHome) is the largest tech lender to real estate investors in the US. SDR role, worldwide remote, with a meaningful path to AE for the right person. Apply: https://remoteOK.com/remote-jobs/remote-sales-development-representative-kiavi-1131514

7. Analytics Engineer — Civitech

Civitech builds technology for progressive campaigns and civic engagement. Analytics Engineer role, worldwide remote, dbt-heavy — meaningful work for someone who wants their data pipelines to actually move the needle on civic outcomes. Apply: https://remoteOK.com/remote-jobs/remote-analytics-engineer-civitech-1131512

8. Tech Lead — Zensurance

Zensurance is a Toronto-based digital insurance brokerage scaling fast. Tech Lead role, worldwide remote, owning a core engineering team. Strong fit for a senior engineer ready to step into a player-coach seat. Apply: https://remoteOK.com/remote-jobs/remote-tech-lead-zensurance-1131509

9. Senior Software Engineer — Cast AI

Cast AI is the Kubernetes cost-optimization platform used by some of the largest engineering orgs in the world. Senior SWE role, worldwide remote — strong fit for backend engineers who like distributed systems and infrastructure. Apply: https://remoteOK.com/remote-jobs/remote-senior-software-engineer-cast-ai-1131507

10. Senior Data Engineer — Valon Mortgage

Valon is the modern mortgage servicer challenging legacy incumbents. Senior Data Engineer role, worldwide remote, building the data layer that powers their entire servicing platform. Apply: https://remoteOK.com/remote-jobs/remote-senior-data-engineer-valon-mortgage-1131504

How semidiffusion Curates AI and Remote Job Listings Differently

Most job newsletters give you a list. I give you a list with an expiration date — because that’s how startup hiring actually works. Every role above was verified open within the past seven days. By the time you read this, some will already be closing. That’s not a flaw in the newsletter. That’s the reality of the market.

The other thing I do differently is source diversity. The startup roles come from founder-led companies and the a16z Build network — positions that founders and their investors are actively promoting, not stale postings sitting in a Greenhouse graveyard. The remote roles come from live RemoteOK data, cross-referenced against the actual job pages.

I’m not going to pretend this is comprehensive. Twenty jobs is a curated snapshot. The AI-era job market has thousands of openings at any given moment, and they churn constantly. What I can promise is that everything you see here is real, current, and comes with enough context to decide whether it’s worth your time.

Get Personalized AI Job Recommendations Every Week

This free edition gives you the same 20 roles everyone else gets. But the AI-era job market is personal. A PM in Shenzhen and a data engineer in Berlin don’t need the same list.

On top of the curated jobs, paid subscribers also get open DMs with me. Tell me about yourself, your background, what you’re optimizing for, and I’ll give you tailor-made recommendations. Flag roles you’ve seen elsewhere and I’ll give you my honest read. Over time, your feedback makes the recommendations sharper. The more I learn about what you’re actually looking for, the better the matches get.

Paid subscribers get a separate, customized weekly jobs email. Here’s how it works:

Subscribe now

I take your background, your target roles, your preferred geographies, and your compensation expectations, and I build a shortlist that’s actually tailored to you. Not an algorithm. Not a keyword match. A human who understands both the AI talent market and the companies behind the listings, filtering for fit.

This is the part of semidiffusion that doesn’t scale, which is exactly why it’s behind the paywall. I can only do this for a small number of people, and I want to do it well.

If you’ve been reading semidiffusion for free and getting value from it, this is the moment to convert. The job market moves fast. Having someone in your corner who’s tracking it in real time is worth more than another browser tab of job board bookmarks.

See you next week. And if you applied to anything from this list, reply and tell me. I want to know what’s landing.

This article is part of semidiffusion’s weekly job posting series, covering remote jobs, AI startup hiring, and digital nomad career opportunities in 2026. We verify every listing within seven days of publication and provide direct apply links. For personalized job recommendations and open DM access, upgrade to a paid subscription at www.semidiffusion.com.

If you’re an AI-powered nomad, you’ve felt this gap. You’re a researcher in Beijing weighing a Bay Area infra startup. An engineer in Lisbon eyeing a stealth Series A in Singapore. A PM in Shenzhen who wants to know what’s actually open at the frontier AI companies this week, not what was open three months ago when some aggregator last crawled the listing.

The opportunities you actually want move in days. The tools you have to find them are stuck in 2019.

Traditional job boards give you volume. What they don’t give you is context. They don’t tell you that Replit just tripled its valuation to $9B and is hiring a Chief of Staff who’ll work directly with the CEO. They don’t tell you that a Harvard Physics PhD is building the future of AI music and needs a PM who understands creators. They don’t tell you that a defense tech founder from Anduril just raised $34M and is hiring engineers to build power systems for the US military.

Context is what separates a job listing from an opportunity.

That’s what semidiffusion is building. In a 2026 job market where remote work listings churn weekly and AI startup roles close in days, I do the work that job boards won’t: I verify that the role is actually open right now, I trace the funding and the founders, and I tell you why the opportunity matters, not just that it exists.

This is the first full Job Posting edition. Two categories, twenty roles, every single one verified open within the past seven days.

AI Startup Jobs — a16z-Backed, Hiring Now

These roles come from the a16z Build network, the talent pipeline of Andreessen Horowitz. Every company below has raised fresh capital and is actively building their team right now. The window on these is narrow: startup hiring moves fast, and these roles will close in days, not months.

1. Chief of Staff to the CEO — Replit Replit just closed a $400M Series D at a $9B valuation, tripling in six months. You’ll work directly with CEO Amjad Masad, owning the hardest cross-functional problems he can’t delegate, coordinating the CEO’s network to accelerate go-to-market internationally, and building integrated views of product, market, and business dynamics that no single function owns. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/replit/95332816-5890-4fac-b5fc-4b0cea0d77db

2. AI Creative Producer — ElevenLabs ElevenLabs is defining what AI-generated content looks like at scale. This role sits on the Creator Growth team. You’ll prototype workflows, test models, and push creative boundaries, producing everything from cinematic visuals and short films to social assets that inspire millions of creators. Apply: https://elevenlabs.io/careers/3178581d-ea70-4dee-b018-2ce2d2a18bbe/ai-creative-producer

3. Product Manager, Artists & Creators — Suno Harvard Physics PhD Mikey Shulman is building the future of AI music generation. You’ll represent the artist and creator journey on Suno, define how creators grow on the platform, build systems that surface and scale talent, and launch new products to accelerate artist success. In-person NYC or Venice Beach. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/suno/0740427c-6afa-4f3f-a3e1-1675fa23301c

4. Senior Product Manager, Consumer — Counsel Health Stanford MD Muthu Alagappan is building an AI-enabled, physician-supervised primary care platform. You’ll own the Day 0 to Day 30 experience for new users, engineer meaningful “aha” moments, and run the core chat experience around how users receive care. Based in NYC. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/counsel/b6edfdc2-539c-4e6d-9b07-054618ef5f70

5. Founding Customer Success Manager — Comfy Ex-Google engineer Yoland Yan raised $30M for Comfy, an open-source, node-based workflow platform for generative AI. You’ll build the customer success playbook from scratch: which customers get white-glove treatment, what onboarding looks like, how to measure health, and how the team scales. Based in SF. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/comfy-org/a1c5c5ed-62ac-4767-af57-a3ba4e0bf5e4

6. Content Engineer — Baseten This isn’t a traditional content role. You’ll operate at the intersection of growth, product marketing, and community building. Your job is to create the pipeline for generating high-viewership content and define Baseten’s playbook for discoverability in AI engines. 3-month contract-to-hire. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/baseten/a0fd4d94-dfd7-4165-9cdd-25e3d31e25c4

7. Brand Designer, Creative Labs — Stripe Stripe’s creative team spans digital installations, interactive games, live-streaming a hand-built city over Black Friday, and producing films. This is a highly experimental, idea-driven role in NYC. Your ability to generate innovative ideas matters as much as your ability to bring them to life. Apply: https://stripe.com/jobs/listing/brand-designer-creative-labs/7793636

8. Senior SWE, Core Product — Salient YC W23 financial ops startup reshaping how millions of loans are serviced through AI. You’ll own everything from payment processing to fraud prevention to customer support, handling both the 0-to-1 MVP development and the 1-to-10 scaling phase. Based in SF. Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/salient/03ec52e9-746f-45e0-8cb5-0fdf057e4ed3

9. Mechanical Engineer — Chariot Defense Founded by Adam Warmoth (prev Anduril, Uber, Archer) with a $34M Series A. You’ll conceptualize, design, develop, and test advanced mechanical and power electronic systems, including fully integrated vehicle platforms for the US military and its allies. Apply: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/chariotdefense/jobs/5181624008

10. Founding Team — Petual (AI for Audit) Snir Kodesh (prev Head of Eng at Retool, Sr Dir of Eng at Lyft) raised $20M to automate SOX testing with AI agents. Over $8B is spent annually on SOX compliance in the US alone. Petual’s agents aim to deliver audit testing results from any dataset in minutes. Building the founding team in SF. Email: contact@petual.ai

Remote Jobs Hiring Worldwide — Verified Open This Week

These roles are sourced from RemoteOK, verified accessible as of this week (data updated May 3, 2026). Every link goes to a real job posting. Click through to the listing page, then hit “Apply” to reach the company’s own application system.

1. Lead Analytics Engineer, Borrowing — Monzo The UK challenger bank is hiring a lead analytics engineer for its lending vertical. You’ll own the data infrastructure that powers lending decisions. Apply: https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-lead-analytics-engineer-borrowing-monzo-1131423

2. Maps Visual Design Relevance Rater (English) — Welo Global An evaluation and annotation role. You’ll rate the visual design relevance of map interfaces. Flexible, contract-based, worldwide. Apply: https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-maps-visual-design-relevance-rater-english-welo-global-1131422

3. Solutions Analyst — Sayari Sayari builds supply chain risk and financial intelligence tools. You’ll work with enterprise clients to implement and optimize the platform. Apply: https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-solutions-analyst-sayari-1131421

4. Senior Data Engineer — Business Wire Berkshire Hathaway’s global press release distribution company is hiring a senior data engineer to build and maintain data pipelines at scale. Apply: https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-senior-data-engineer-business-wire-1131415

5. Digital Full Stack Engineer — Smart Working Solutions Full stack role (HR172) at a remote-first consultancy. You’ll build digital products across the stack. Apply: https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-digital-full-stack-engineer-hr172-smart-working-solutions-1131414

6. Full Stack Staff Engineer — Join Staff-level full stack engineering at Join, a construction estimating platform. Senior IC role with architectural ownership. Apply: https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-full-stack-staff-engineer-join-1131413

7. VP of Global Customer Success & Support — JumpCloud Executive role at JumpCloud, the open directory platform. You’ll lead global CS and support strategy for a company serving 200,000+ organizations. Apply: https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-vice-president-of-global-customer-success-amp-support-jumpcloud-1131411

8. Senior Software Developer — Geotab Geotab is one of the largest telematics companies in the world. You’ll build software for fleet management and IoT at scale. Burnaby-based but remote-friendly. Apply: https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-senior-software-developer-burnaby-geotab-1131407

9. Founding Engineer — Haast Early-stage founding engineer role. You’ll have significant ownership and build core product from scratch. Apply: https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-founding-engineer-haast-1131402

10. Staff Data Engineer — Imagine Pediatrics Imagine Pediatrics delivers virtual-first care for children with complex medical needs. You’ll build the data infrastructure powering clinical operations and outcomes measurement. Apply: https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-staff-data-engineer-imagine-pediatrics-1131401

How semidiffusion Curates AI and Remote Job Listings Differently

Most job newsletters give you a list. I give you a list with an expiration date, because that’s how startup hiring actually works. Every role above was verified open within the past seven days. By the time you read this, some will already be closing. That’s not a flaw in the newsletter. That’s the reality of the market.

The other thing I do differently is source diversity. The startup roles come from the a16z Build network, which means you’re seeing positions that founders and their investors are actively promoting, not stale postings sitting in a Greenhouse graveyard. The remote roles come from live RemoteOK data, cross-referenced against the actual job pages.

I’m not going to pretend this is comprehensive. Twenty jobs is a curated snapshot. The AI-era job market has thousands of openings at any given moment, and they churn constantly. What I can promise is that everything you see here is real, current, and comes with enough context to decide whether it’s worth your time.

Get Personalized AI Job Recommendations Every Week

This free edition gives you the same 20 roles everyone else gets. But the AI-era job market is personal. A PM in Shenzhen and a data engineer in Berlin don’t need the same list.

Paid subscribers get a separate, customized weekly jobs email. Here’s how it works:

I take your background, your target roles, your preferred geographies, and your compensation expectations, and I build a shortlist that’s actually tailored to you. Not an algorithm. Not a keyword match. A human who understands both the AI talent market and the companies behind the listings, filtering for fit.

On top of the curated jobs, paid subscribers also get open DMs with me. Tell me about yourself, your background, what you’re optimizing for, and I’ll give you tailor-made recommendations. Flag roles you’ve seen elsewhere and I’ll give you my honest read. Over time, your feedback makes the recommendations sharper. The more I learn about what you’re actually looking for, the better the matches get.

This is the part of semidiffusion that doesn’t scale, which is exactly why it’s behind the paywall. I can only do this for a small number of people, and I want to do it well.

Subscribe now

If you've been reading semidiffusion for free and getting value from it, this is the moment to convert. The job market moves fast. Having someone in your corner who's tracking it in real time is worth more than another browser tab of job board bookmarks.

See you next week. And if you applied to anything from this list, reply and tell me. I want to know what’s landing.

This article is part of semidiffusion’s weekly job posting series, covering remote jobs, AI startup hiring, and digital nomad career opportunities in 2026. We verify every listing within seven days of publication and provide direct apply links. For personalized job recommendations and open DM access, upgrade to a paid subscription at www.semidiffusion.com.

P.S. Know someone who's job hunting in the AI space? Forward this to them. They can subscribe for free at www.semidiffusion.com.

Previous highlights

What actually happens is that the AI labs behind the scenes run internal experiments on a cadence that is completely disconnected from your personal income needs.

So I did what any rational operator does when one of their income streams temporarily dries up. I installed the second app.

A few years ago, every serious gig driver I knew had both Uber and Lyft open on their dashboards at the same time. Not because they disliked either platform, but because running on a single app is how you get quietly starved out. The AI training economy is reaching the same moment. If Mercor is the Uber of this space, with the broadest marketplace and the loudest IPO chatter, then micro1 is the Lyft. A credible second platform with its own philosophy, its own pay cycles, and its own approach to how it matches experts to AI labs.

Here is what I learned in the last two weeks.

A brief history of micro1

The company you know as micro1 was not originally called micro1. It was called Moontek, incorporated on September 1, 2019, in Los Angeles, by a founder named Ali Javid. For its first three years, Moontek was a boutique talent arbitrage firm. The business model was essentially to find elite technical talent in emerging markets who were priced below their US peers, and connect them to American startups. It was a service business, not a platform.

The pivot started quietly in June 2022, when the company released its first AI-powered technical assessment tool. By 2023, Moontek had been folded into a new identity called micro1, headquartered in Palo Alto. This is a pattern I find fascinating from a product perspective. The original talent network was the moat. The AI vetting tool was the scaling mechanism that turned a services business into software.

Today micro1 is run by Ali Ansari, a 24-year-old serial entrepreneur who is completing a part-time master’s at Stanford under the mentorship of Stefano Ermon, one of the most respected names in reinforcement learning. This detail matters more than it looks. Ansari’s academic connection to Ermon tells you exactly where the platform is going: RL environments, agentic workflows, verifiable reasoning tasks. The technical roadmap is not accidental.

The financials back this up. micro1 entered 2025 with roughly $7 million in ARR. By December it had crossed $100 million. The most recent funding round valued the company around $500 million, with chatter about the next round landing well above $2.5 billion. The backers include Founders Fund, 01 Advisors, and Jason Calacanis. The board includes Adam Bain, the former COO of Twitter.

None of this guarantees a great experience for contributors. But it does tell you that micro1 is not a weekend project. It has the capital, the customers, and the academic lineage to be a meaningful second platform for the foreseeable future.

Why I am not writing Mercor's obituary

I want to be clear about something before I go further. I am not writing Mercor’s obituary, and I do not think the playbook I shared in my previous article has expired. If anything, the thesis behind that playbook is getting stronger.

In March, Ansari and his chief economist Mark Esposito published a paper I would recommend every aspiring AI trainer read once. It is called “No Last Mile: A Theory of the Human Data Market.” The argument is simple. Human data is not temporary scaffolding that gets removed once the building is finished. It is a permanent maintenance layer. Models depreciate. Task contexts drift. Standards evolve. New edge cases emerge constantly. The paper’s conservative calibration predicts a steady-state labor share of five to seven percent for human-data work in the AI economy. Small as a percentage. Enormous as a dollar figure.

If you internalize this thesis, the Mercor pause stops feeling like an existential threat and starts feeling like a scheduling issue. Projects will resume. New ones will start. In the meantime, you do what any rational operator does and diversify your distribution.

The interview: meeting Zara

Read more

Previous highlights

Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan called it “a major national security issue” on X. Reddit threads on r/mercor_ai blew up overnight. The stolen data is reportedly being auctioned on the dark web.

I am not going to sugarcoat this. It is a serious incident.

But here is what I will say after six months on the platform, earning over $37k and ranking in the top 10% of contributors:

Mercor is still one of the best ways to make real money with your expertise, from anywhere in the world. Breaches happen to companies of every size. Remember the Microsoft, LastPass, and even the National Public Data incidents? What matters now is how Mercor responds, and whether the fundamentals of the opportunity have changed. They have not. AI labs still desperately need human experts for training data, and the pay still reflects that urgency.

If you are already on the platform, change your passwords immediately, enable two-factor authentication, and monitor your bank accounts closely over the next few months. If you are thinking about joining, do not let one security event scare you away from a genuinely transformative income stream.

And while we are on the topic, I want to encourage you to keep an open mind about the broader ecosystem. Mercor is excellent, but it is not the only game in town. Platforms like Micro1 and Surge AI offer similar opportunities connecting domain experts with AI labs. Diversifying across multiple platforms is smart for both income stability and risk management, especially in moments like this.

Now let me answer the questions I have been getting most from readers.

Q&A: Your Mercor Questions, Answered

Q1: My first two projects did not go well. How do I recover my standing on Mercor?

Read more

Previous highlights

So here it is. The playbook I wish someone had handed me on day one.

But first, a mindset shift. Because if you walk into Mercor thinking like a traditional freelancer—or worse, like a salaried employee—you’re going to have a terrible time.

The AI-Era Uber

Let me give you the mental model that changed everything for me.

Mercor is Uber for AI training. Structurally.

Think about what Uber did. It sat between people who needed rides and people who could drive. It didn’t employ the drivers. It didn’t own the cars. It built the marketplace, handled the matching, and took a cut. The drivers showed up, completed trips, got rated, and either kept getting rides or didn’t.

Mercor does the same thing, except the “riders” are frontier AI labs—OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, Meta, and others building the most powerful models on the planet—and the “drivers” are domain experts like you and me. The labs need human-generated data to train and evaluate their models. They need people who can spot where GPT-5 or Gemini or Claude falls apart, write better responses, and judge which outputs are actually correct. Mercor finds those people, organizes them into project teams, and manages the whole operation.

Once you internalize this, a lot of things that frustrate people suddenly make sense.

Projects ending abruptly? That’s normal. The AI lab finished that phase of training, or their evaluation goals shifted, or the model got good enough at that particular task that they no longer need human data for it. It’s not personal. It’s not a performance issue. It’s a ride ending because the passenger reached their destination.

I see people in community groups losing their minds every time a project gets terminated. “I just got off-boarded!” “They cut us without warning!” I understand the anxiety. Losing income is stressful. But panicking about project termination on Mercor is like an Uber driver panicking every time a passenger gets out of the car. That’s… how it works.

The better analogy might be commercial fishing. You go where the fish are. Some seasons are abundant. Some aren’t. You maintain your gear, keep your skills sharp, and stay ready for the next run. The fisherman who prospers isn’t the one who catches one big haul and retires. It’s the one who shows up consistently, reads the water, and adapts.

So rule number one of the Mercor playbook: get comfortable with impermanence. Don’t over-index on any single project. Don’t mentally spend money you haven’t earned yet. And don’t mistake a project ending for a career ending.

What You’re Actually Getting Paid For

Here’s something that trips up a lot of new Mercor contributors, especially people coming from traditional tech jobs: you’re not getting paid to be smart. You’re getting paid to find where the model is stupid.

That distinction matters enormously. The AI labs aren’t hiring domain experts because they want you to demonstrate your knowledge. They’re hiring you because their model needs to get better, and the only way it gets better is if humans identify the gaps and fill them with high-quality data.

Your job, at its core, is quality control and gap detection. You’re looking at model outputs and asking: Where did this go wrong? What did it miss? What does it think it knows but actually doesn’t? And then you’re writing responses that show the model—or, more precisely, the training pipeline—what a correct, complete, expert-level answer actually looks like.

This requires a specific kind of thinking. You need to resist the urge to just “write a good answer.” Instead, you need to interrogate the model’s attempt first. Find the failure modes. Spot the hallucinations, the subtle logical errors, the places where the model sounds confident but is actually making things up. Then, and only then, craft the expert response that addresses those exact weaknesses.

The people who do this well become invaluable. The people who just bang out competent answers without really engaging with why the model failed get average ratings and wonder why they’re not getting staffed on the good projects.

The SPL: Your Most Important Relationship

Every Mercor project has an SPL—a Special Project Lead. If Mercor is Uber, the SPL is the dispatcher who also happens to be your local manager, client liaison, and quality gatekeeper rolled into one.

Read more

What it does require is deep domain expertise and the ability to teach artificial intelligence how to think.

Over the last four months, I’ve made $37,000 working on Mercor, a platform that connects experts with top-tier AI labs. I am currently a top performer at one of the leading AI training data companies and rank in the top 10% of earners.

This is my first article breaking down exactly how this ecosystem works—and more importantly, how you can break into it.

There is a new category of jobs quietly emerging in the tech world. It doesn’t require you to live in Silicon Valley, and it doesn’t require a traditional corporate resume.

What it does require is deep domain expertise and the ability to teach artificial intelligence how to think.

Over the last four months, I’ve made $37,000 working on Mercor, a platform that connects experts with top-tier AI labs. I am currently a top performer at one of the leading AI training data companies and rank in the top 10% of earners.

This is my first article breaking down exactly how this ecosystem works—and more importantly, how you can break into it.

The Shift: The Demand for Human Intelligence is Real

Right now, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and others are locked in an arms race. But they’ve hit a bottleneck: they are running out of high-quality human data to train their models.

To bridge the gap from GPT-4 to the next frontier, these companies need experts for SFT (Supervised Fine-Tuning) and RLVR (Reinforcement Learning from Verifiable Rewards). They need humans who can evaluate complex agentic workflows and correct AI when it hallucinates.

The demand for human experts is massive, and the compensation reflects that.

The First Hurdle: Cracking the AI Interview

To get access to these high-paying tasks, you have to pass the vetting process. Here is where most people fail: Your interviewer is an AI.

Read more

semi◦diffusion is your bridge to the world's top remote positions. We cut through the noise and deliver only the highest-value, most flexible opportunities. No matter where you are, we help you break free from the traditional office and take full control of your time while maintaining top-tier earnings.

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💼 Role Details: Consumer Electronics Expert

This is an opportunity to leverage your consumer electronics domain knowledge to evaluate the quality and relevance of agent-generated research reports in the consumer electronics space. You will be directly involved in training and optimizing cutting-edge AI models.

• Work Mode: Fully remote (100% Remote), location flexible.

• Client: You will indirectly serve top international AI laboratories.

• Compensation: 80 – 150 RMB per task (task-based pay, flexible and efficient).

🎯 Who Are We Looking For?

If you meet the following criteria, this is the perfect side hustle or freelance opportunity:

• Background in consumer electronics.

• Interest in AI technology and willingness to "teach the machines" with your domain expertise.

• A high-agency work style with consistent, high-quality output.

• Basic English writing ability.

📩 How to Apply

This is a direct entry point into the high-value AI data supply chain. No complex interview process required. We value your professional track record.

1. Reply directly to this email

2. Attach your CV and relevant experience.

💌 Feel free to forward this to friends who are passionate about consumer electronics and remote work. Forward and receive 1 month of free semi◦diffusion membership, including exclusive job postings and practical tips for solopreneurs.

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This is semi◦diffusion. semi◦diffusion connects you with the world's top remote positions. We cut through the noise and deliver only the highest-value, most flexible opportunities. No matter where you are, we help you break free from the traditional office and take full control of your time while maintaining top-tier earnings.

This article is based on notes from Stanford neurobiology professor Andrew Huberman's episode on "Sugar and the Brain."

Whenever work stress piles up or my mood dips, I crave something sweet. And that impulse is incredibly hard to suppress.

We all know too much sugar is bad for us. But why can't we stop? Why do we plan to eat just one cookie and end up finishing the whole pack? Why do bubble tea and soda always taste so irresistible?

After listening to Andrew Huberman's episode on "Sugar and the Brain," it all clicked.

It's not your fault. Blame your nervous system.

Your sugar cravings are the result of interactions between your brain, your gut, and your nervous system. Even if you numbed your taste buds entirely, your brain would still desperately want sugar.

01 Sugar's Double Trap: You Literally Can't Escape

We usually assume we crave sweets because of taste, because they're delicious. That's only half right.

At least half of your sugar cravings are "unconscious," driven by your gut.

Sugar controls your brain through two parallel highways. The first is taste. When you eat something sweet, receptors on your tongue immediately signal your brain: "Good stuff! Release the dopamine!" This is a split-second reaction that makes you feel instant pleasure. The second highway is your gut. Your intestines contain special cells called Neuropod cells. Even if you eat carbs with no sweetness, or hidden sugars with their taste masked, as long as they reach your stomach and can be converted into glucose, these cells light up.

They fire a direct message to your brain via the vagus nerve: "Energy detected! Make him eat more!"

Scientists removed the sweet-taste receptors in mice (so they couldn't taste sweetness) and gave them sugar water. At first, the mice wouldn't drink it. But 15 minutes later, once the sugar water hit their gut and activated the Neuropod cells, the mice started drinking the "tasteless water" like crazy.

Even if you fool your tongue, you can't fool your gut. That's why so many non-sweet processed foods (chips, crackers) are equally addictive. They're loaded with hidden sugars that activate your gut.

02 Lemon Juice and Cinnamon: "Blood Sugar Medicine" from Your Kitchen

Now that you understand the mechanism, how do you fight back?

Here are a few practical methods that don't cost much.

Before (or during) eating high-carb or sweet foods, drink a few spoonfuls of lemon juice or lime juice diluted in water. The sourness doesn't just alter your taste perception. It also slows gastric emptying and blunts the blood sugar spike. Smaller blood sugar swings mean a weaker dopamine rollercoaster, which means less craving for "just one more bite."

Cinnamon is also remarkably effective. Sprinkle some when cooking or into your coffee. Cinnamon can mimic insulin's action, helping slow the rate at which sugar enters your bloodstream. Make sure you buy real cinnamon (Ceylon), and keep your intake under 1.5 teaspoons per day to avoid potential liver strain.

03 Sleep and Fish Oil

Research shows that sleep isn't just rest. It's a metabolic "rehearsal."

If you're sleep-deprived, your nervous system essentially malfunctions. It sends false signals telling you to keep eating even when you're full.

Getting enough sleep is the cheapest appetite-control medicine there is.

Supplement with at least 1 gram of Omega-3 EPA daily (check the fish oil label, focus on EPA content).

This isn't just for your heart. It's for repairing your neurons and dialing down your dopamine system's sensitivity, so it doesn't go haywire over every little taste of sweetness.

We don't need to demonize sugar. We don't need to never eat a slice of cake again. But we need to understand that many of today's snacks are engineered to exploit your neurological weak points. The next time you reach for another cookie, pause for one second and ask yourself:

Do you actually want it? Or are a few cells in your gut pulling your strings?

Drink some lemon water. Get a good night's sleep. Take back control.

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在大模型迅速扩张的当下，真正稀缺的已不再是算力或参数规模，而是经过专业训练、具备方法论与判断力的人类知识本身。

字节跳动旗下的 Xpert 专家数据平台，正是在这一背景下逐步搭建的一项长期性知识工程。

专家招募链接（邀请通道）

👉👉👉 半扩散工作室专属邀请通道

平台入口

https://xpert.bytedance.com/

Xpert 并非简单的数据众包平台，而更接近一种专家参与式的知识建构系统：通过不同学科专家的介入，为大模型提供结构化、可解释、可推演的高质量数据输入。

工作方式

• 工作地点灵活，完全远程

• 以项目与任务为单位，强调成果而非工时

报酬机制

• 基于专业深度与任务复杂度设定

• 更接近咨询式或研究式合作，而非流水线劳动

开放的学科版图

平台目前覆盖并持续扩展多个知识领域，包括但不限于：

• 社会科学

• 科研与学术研究

• 语言与翻译

• 写作与创作

• 法律

• 金融

• 教育

• 医疗与健康

半扩散工作室往期专家独家发布推荐｜World Model 事务所金融数据专家