MeritFirst | Senior Software Engineer | Austin, TX (ONSITE) | Full-time
MeritFirst Austin, TX (ONSITE)
Why this grade
This listing scored 45/100, which is a D. It lost the most ground on pay transparency.
- Freshness 15 / 15 How recently it was posted. Older postings are likelier to be filled or abandoned.
- Description depth 14 / 20 How much the posting actually says about the work, measured in characters of real text.
- Remote clarity 8 / 15 Whether "remote" means anywhere, or is quietly restricted to one country.
- Corroboration 5 / 10 Whether more than one source carries this listing.
- Role specificity 3 / 10 Whether the listing is tagged well enough to tell what the role actually is.
- Pay transparency 0 / 25 A published salary range, worth more than any other single factor because it is what a candidate cannot find out without applying.
Every figure above is arithmetic over the posting itself — its salary field, its text, its age, its tags and how many sources carry it. How the grades work →
This listing does not state a salary
$127k – $168k
That is the middle half of what comparable roles paid on this board over the last 90 days — 24 listings that did publish a figure, median $145k. It is not this employer's offer, and we have no idea what they pay. It is only what the rest of the market advertised.
hn-hiring
MeritFirst helps companies hire on demonstrated ability instead of pedigree. Candidates take realistic work-sample assessments, and employers get a signal they can trust more than a resume. We are backed by 8VC and Slow Ventures.
The hard part is building a signal good enough to influence real hiring decisions: fair to candidates, predictive for employers, explainable, and hard to game.
What you'll build:
- The product candidates use to prove what they can do
- The product employers use to find and hire them, and the scoring behind it
- The engineering bar the next hires will inherit, and helping us hire them
Stack: TypeScript, React, Next.js, Postgres.
We want people who have built and run real production software, debug from evidence, and do not need a fully specified roadmap. Early engineers, technical founders, and senior ICs do well here.
We use AI to move faster and to understand code better, but we do not blindly ship what it writes. You are expected to know and own every line you commit.
Start with the assessment: https://www.meritfirst.us/candidate/tests/40bfae94-dbf6-43fd-8ac3-b804eee7ad47
Apply for this role Opens meritfirst.us — verified as the employer's own application page
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Where this listing came from
- 01 Oct 2026 Hacker News first sighting
Seen on 1 board over 2 days.