Software Engineer, Python - Codebase Q&A
This is the employer's own posting, not a copy on a job board.
What we know
Is it still open?
Confirmed still open
Last checked 1h ago — checked against the employer's own applicant tracking system, which is the company answering directly.
We re-read the employer's own applicant tracking system and the posting was still there. That is the company answering directly.
How old is it?
Posted 13h ago
The date the source published, not the day we noticed it (2026-09-16). Last seen at its source just now.
Is it remote?
Marked remote on the employer's board
Their board carries a remote setting on this posting — a field they filled in, not wording we read. The location field names somewhere specific, which is usually where the team or the entity sits.
Who may apply?
United States
The description states no restriction of its own. This is the source's own tag.
Pay not stated
Similar roles pay $158.5k–225k/yr
Middle 50% of 2181 listings that do state pay — Engineering · all levels · United States · USD/year. This employer has published no salary; this is what comparable listings we hold disclose, never converted between currencies or periods. How this is calculated.
Skills named in the ad
Recognised terms only, from a fixed vocabulary — this is what CV matching compares against.
Carried by 1 source
-
workable employer's own board first seen 1h ago · last seen just now
The listing
This role is for one of our clients
Compensation: $130 per task
We are seeking experienced Python engineers to build the dataset that teaches AI agents to reason about real codebases.
Codebase Q&A is a reinforcement-learning environment for training AI agents to explore and reason about software repositories they have never seen before. You will build difficult codebase-exploration tasks: high-level engineering questions about production Python repositories that cannot be answered by reading a single file, and that require runtime evidence to resolve — the kind of question a senior engineer answers by actually investigating the system.
This track works on widely deployed Python codebases including Django, Twisted, Scrapy, SymPy, mypy, pip, coverage.py, mitmproxy, Certbot, Tornado, Werkzeug, sqlfluff and Meson.
Contract, task-based work paid at $130 per approved task, performed remotely in our Studio.
Requirements
Key Responsibilities
- Select tasks from a pre-validated pool of Python repositories, each pinned to a specific git commit and arriving with an engineering question, positive and negative rubrics, foils, and a golden solution
- Explore the repository until you genuinely understand the subsystem in question, including the relevant PR or issue history
- Rewrite the task's question so it defeats frontier coding agents while remaining well-defined and fairly answerable
- Adjust rubrics and foils so they reward correct reasoning and reject plausible-but-wrong answers
- Run the full validation loop in Studio — Check, Golden, Run, Analyze — and iterate until every stage passes
- Document your work in the task README and submit for expert review, addressing reviewer feedback on returned tasks
Ideal Qualifications
- 3+ years of professional software engineering experience, with substantial production Python
- Demonstrated ability to navigate a large, unfamiliar Python codebase and explain how it behaves at runtime — not just what the source says
- Fluency in Python internals that matter in real systems: import machinery, descriptors and metaclasses, async and event loops, packaging, and C-extension boundaries
- Experience with web frameworks, developer tooling, type checkers, or scientific/numeric libraries is highly relevant — the task mix is weighted toward architecture and system design (41%) and code onboarding (31%)
- Precise written English: the questions and rubrics you write are the product
- Comfortable with git at commit level, containerized environments, and command-line tooling
Working Details
- Fully remote and asynchronous, with expert team leads across US, India, and Nigeria time zones
- Work is performed in our Studio; time is tracked with Insightful, and platform access is provisioned through Okta
- Onboarding requires identity verification, a background check, signed Terms of Work and CIIAA, a tax form, and passing a short calibration quiz before task access is granted
- Payment is per approved task; every task is reviewed by a second engineer and a super reviewer before acceptance
Application Process
- Submit your resume or relevant technical background to get started
- Qualified applicants may be asked to complete a brief technical assessment or provide additional information
We consider all qualified applicants without regard to legally protected characteristics and provide reasonable accommodations upon request.