Strategic Projects Lead, Deeptune

About Mercor Mercor’s mission is to organize human intelligence for the AI economy. We build the infrastructure that enables frontier AI labs and enterprises to train, evaluate, and improve AI on real-world professional work. More than five million experts have joined our network, and we pay out over $5 million daily for their knowledge and expertise. We built our training and evaluation infrastructure alongside the world’s leading AI labs. Now, we’re bringing those capabilities to enterprises across industries, enabling them to train, evaluate, and improve AI using their own expertise and standards. Our APEX benchmarks measure how AI performs on economically valuable work, while our enterprise evaluations and post-training capabilities turn those insights into measurable improvements across real-world workflows. Our work sits at the intersection of frontier AI, human expertise, and real-world application. We’re solving problems few companies have encountered, with the opportunity to influence what the world’s most advanced AI systems become capable of doing. We’re looking for people who bring different perspectives, take ownership, exercise sound judgment, and hold themselves to an exceptionally high standard. You’ll have the opportunity to do consequential work alongside talented colleagues who challenge one another, collaborate openly, and share a commitment to excellence. Mercor is profitable and recently raised a $750 million Series D at a $20 billion valuation. We work in person five days a week in San Francisco, New York, and London. About Deeptune Deeptune is an RL environments lab within Mercor that builds training gyms for AI agents: high-fidelity simulations where AI learns to perform real-world tasks through reinforcement learning. We work with the leading AI labs to help them train the next generation of agentic models, and our environments have already contributed to recent breakthroughs in computer use, code generation, and multi-step task completion. About the Role We're looking for a Strategic Projects Lead to own and scale the data operations that power frontier AI training. This is a high-ownership role for someone with strong agency, comfortable making decisions with incomplete information, and able to build processes that hold up under pressure. As an SPL, you will own projects end to end, from scoping through final delivery. You'll manage a distributed team, forecast timelines, meet throughput targets, and maintain a high bar for everything that ships. You'll face ambiguous problems and are expected to solve them in ways that scale across the org. Your work will directly shape frontier models and how they're deployed. We are hiring for Strategic Projects Associates, Strategic Projects Leads, and Senior Strategic Projects Leads. If you apply through this link, we'll evaluate you for the role that best fits your level of experience. What You'll Do Own delivery end-to-end: You're accountable for data delivery end-to-end, including deadlines, throughput, and quality Solve ambiguous problems: When you find a broken or inefficient process, you will build a scalable solution that the whole org will benefit from Build and lead contributor teams: Recruit, train, and manage a distributed workforce; turn new hires into high performers. Partner cross-functionally: Work closely with our engineers to scope technical requirements, flag blockers, and ship improvements to our pipeline infrastructure Drive continuous improvement: Identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and quality gaps, and then build the solution.s SPLs are obsessed with both quality and velocity . You'll combine analytical rigor, quantitative thinking, strong judgment, and creative problem-solving to move data efficiently through complex systems – often with imperfect information. What We're Looking For 2+ Years of experience: Background in consulting, finance, startups, or other operationally intense environments. Skills: Strong analytical and communication abilities; proven track record of managing complex projects. Customer-Facing Experience: Comfortable working directly with high-profile clients. Mindset: Excited by "gritty" process optimization and large-scale execution. About You You're a self-directed operator who takes ownership without being asked. You'd rather build a system than do the same task twice. You're motivated by the chance to shape how frontier AI gets built. You are motivated by ownership, impact, and building frontier tech. Your work is a craft you want to master. You thrive in ambiguity and love hard problems. You appreciate diverse perspectives and uncommon ideas. You are excited to build in person, 5 days a week, from our office at One World Trade. Key Facts SPLs generate $10M+ in project revenue annually. Customer requests are high-pressure and time-sensitive (e.g., onboarding 1,000 contributors in 3 days, delivering 10+ hours of quality data per contributor within 48 hours). The role is explicitly operations-focused—not strategy, product, or GTM. Growth Path SPLs begin as individual contributors, running projects end-to-end. High performers may advance to Senior SPL (SSPL) roles, managing multiple projects and teams of SPLs. Compensation Base cash comp from $120K-$150k for SPL, and up to $200k for an SSPL Bi-annual performance bonus structure Generous equity grant vested over 4 years $15K relocation bonus (for moving to the New York metropolitan area) $10K housing bonus (if you live within 0.5 miles of our office) $1.5K monthly stipend for meals Free Equinox membership $200 monthly laundry reimbursement $200 monthly personal wellness reimbursement Health, Dental, Vision insurance 401(k) with company match Mercor is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is committed to providing equal opportunity to all employees and applicants. Mercor does not discriminate based on actual or perceived race, color, creed, religion, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, sex or gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, related medical conditions and lactation), gender identity or gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, military service and veteran status, disability, protected medical condition as defined by California or local law, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, California, or local laws and ordinances. Further, Mercor prohibits discrimination, harassment, and retaliation based on any combination of protected characteristics. This Policy applies to all areas of employment, including recruitment, hiring, training, promotion, compensation, benefits, discipline, termination, and all other privileges, terms, and conditions of employment. This Policy and the law prohibit employment discrimination against any employee or applicant based on any legally protected status.