Surety Underwriter & Bond Specialist

$80/hrrate as listed

Mercor is recruiting surety underwriters, bond producers, and surety claims professionals to write and grade contractor-capacity, credit-analysis, and bond-default scenarios used to train a frontier AI lab's models. Work is remote and project-based, with an observed rate around $800 per task and a 20-hour weekly minimum.

Summary, eligibility guidance and screening preparation are prepared by Sidequest from the platform's posting. Check the source listing before applying.

What the work actually involves

You build the material a model learns surety from. That means authoring realistic scenarios — a general contractor asking for a $12M single job on a $20M aggregate, a WIP schedule with suspicious underbillings, an obligee insisting on a non-standard performance bond form, a payment-bond claim from a second-tier supplier — and then writing the reference answer a seasoned underwriter or claims professional would give. After that you grade model attempts against structured rubrics covering credit judgment, capacity reasoning, bond-form accuracy, and default-resolution realism, and write feedback explaining precisely where the reasoning broke.

The failure modes you're hunting are specific: a model that treats a surety bond as first-party insurance, that pays a claim without touching indemnity or salvage, that reads a percentage-of-completion statement as if it were a manufacturer's balance sheet, that recommends takeover when tender or financing was obviously cheaper, or that confuses a Miller Act statutory bond with an AIA A312. Vague grades don't help the research team — the note has to name the error and the standard it violates.

What the platform screens for

Mercor's screen is AI-led and follow-up heavy. Expect it to take a claim like "I underwrote contract surety" and push: what aggregate did you carry authority for, what did your file look like when you declined, how did you set collateral. It is testing whether you can reason from a financial statement to a capacity number out loud, and whether you know where surety departs from property-casualty. Designations (AFSB, CPCU, CPA) help but do not substitute for being able to walk a WIP schedule.

Logistics

Fully remote and largely asynchronous; you pick up tasks from a queue
Minimum 20 hours per week, with 40+ preferred and generally better-supplied with work
Live onboarding office hours and periodic calibration sessions — these are synchronous and attendance matters
Rolling review, immediate start; pay observed at $800 per task, which varies by task length and complexity and is not guaranteed

What they look for

2+ years in surety underwriting, bond production, surety claims, or contract-surety credit analysis
Reading contractor financial statements and work-in-progress schedules to reach capacity conclusions
Working knowledge of the three-party surety relationship: indemnity, collateral, subrogation and salvage
Familiarity with at least one bond category — contract, commercial, court and fiduciary, license and permit, or subdivision
Standard and statutory bond forms (AIA A312, Miller Act / Little Miller Act, obligee-specific forms)
Clear written reasoning that explains a credit decision, not just states it

Included with this listing

Interview prep — 10 questions

Matched to what this platform's screening actually measures. Answer each out loud in 60–90 seconds: claim → concrete example → implication.

What it tests: Whether your experience is genuine underwriting or claims authority versus adjacent exposure such as general P&C or account servicing.
A strong answer: Name the employer type, the bond categories you handled, your single and aggregate authority limits (or the referral thresholds above them), and roughly the size and trade mix of the contractor accounts on your desk.
Where people lose it: Saying 'I worked in commercial insurance and handled some bonds' — the screen reads unquantified, unbounded answers as agency-desk order-taking rather than credit decision-making.