About idler

idler is a frontier data research lab. We build the evals and environments that the world's leading frontier labs use to measure and train their models.

After raising a $9m seed round led by Paradigm, we spent the last year developing coding evals for top coding models you know and love. At the same time, we've expanded into other domains besides coding: RSI & Auto-Research, Law, Enterprise Business, Cybersecurity, and others. Now, we are facing more lab demand for our data than we can serve, and are rapidly scaling the team to grow the business.

Our approach to creating training data scales using technology, and all of our data products are built on a unified self-reinforcing platform that learns through experience.

You would be joining a close-knit team that has reached product market fit, and your work would directly help to multiply our revenue.

You can see some of our work here: https://idler.ai/collections

About the role

As a Software Engineer at idler, you’ll build the systems and infrastructure that our entire company relies on. You will solve open-ended, technical challenges with focus on performance, scale, and simplicity. In the era of AI-coding, systems-level thinking and attention to detail is more important than experience with a particular framework or language.

Examples of what you'll do

Design and build scaleable systems that generate RL environments
Create agentic QA systems to validate environment quality and fairness
Work directly with AI researchers at leading labs to understand what makes training data effective
Handle petabyte scale ETL and orchestrate millions of concurrent jobs
Support new product lines as we expand beyond coding environments
Manage our security posture and compliance requirements

What we’re looking for

1-10 years of experience writing excellent production software (new grads OK)
Experience with full-stack applications in a popular programming language
A meticulous problem solver who creates robust systems under time pressure

Tech stack

Typescript, React, NodeJS, Postgres, Redis, Vercel, Cursor/Claude Code/Codex, Tinker, Modal, AWS, Daytona, GRPO

Details

In-person in San Francisco
Competitive salary + meaningful equity
Free meals in office
Healthcare, 401(k), 15 days of PTO per year
Relocation assistance
Small, ambitious team

This is an in-person role in San Francisco. We're a tight-knit founding team and we play to win. Join us if you like to win too.

About the company

Idler provides AI agents that automate back-office and operational tasks for businesses. Its platform combines document parsing, decision logic, and agent-driven execution to manage end-to-end workflows such as order fulfillment, payment collection, and service scheduling, including PO processing and invoicing. It configures automations that update trackers, send emails, and coordinate with vendors and clients, with human intervention only when needed. It starts with a four-week pilot to map workflows, set up and tune automations, and measure impact, followed by a tailored plan to scale. The goal is to reduce manual work and boost efficiency for organizations that rely heavily on spreadsheets, emails, and vendor portals.

Company Size

11-50

Company Stage

Seed

Total Funding

$9.1M

Headquarters

San Francisco, California

Founded

2025

Get referred to Idler

See people who can refer or advise you

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

Paradigm led Idler's $9 million seed on August 20, 2026.
Post-training Nemotron 3 Nano improved Finance Agent Benchmark from 30.0% to 41.8%.
YC lists a twelve-person team and an active San Francisco company on September 7, 2026.

What critics are saying

Idler's credibility depends on unnamed frontier-lab customers; none are publicly disclosed.
Selling environments to frontier labs limits demand to a handful of buyers worldwide.
If frontier labs build internal environments, Idler loses its only market.

What makes Idler unique

August 19, 2026 launch: proprietary operating-data benchmarks, not generic chatbot wrappers.
ShelfLife uses a live retailer's complete operations across nine stores and three platforms.
YC S25 founders bring Dark Forest, Microsoft, PayMongo, and Census Bureau experience.

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Benefits

Health Insurance
Meal Benefits
Relocation Assistance
Paid Vacation
Company Social Events

Company News

The Adventurer

Aug 20th, 2026

idler raises $9M led by Paradigm to sell evals and RL environments to frontier AI labs

idler launched on 19 August as a frontier data research lab with a $9 million seed round led by Paradigm, alongside Y Combinator, Long Journey VC and angels. The company sells evaluations, benchmarks and reinforcement learning environments to labs training frontier models. The timing suggests a real market. Z.ai described synthesizing RL environments end to end for GLM-5.3, and Harvey built LAB environments before post-training Tenet — both announcements made the same week. Paradigm's involvement marks a notable rotation of crypto capital into AI infrastructure. The business model targets perhaps 15 organisations worldwide, making it high-margin but low-volume. The announcement contains no product details, methodology or named customers. For a company whose credibility depends on client names, this absence is significant. The company also does not address the independence question raised by grading systems its own customers are measured against.

Idler

Software Engineer

About the job