Mercor is recruiting FPGA and digital design engineers who already run Quartus II on their own Windows machine to produce screen-captured task work that trains and evaluates AI models on real EDA workflows. You supply the licence, the installation, and a display capable of screenshots above 2.5 megapixels; the platform supplies the tasks and pays an observed $55–65/hr.

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

What the work involves

You work inside Quartus II the way you normally would — creating projects, writing or editing HDL, assigning pins, running Analysis & Synthesis, reading fitter and timing reports, launching TimeQuest/Timing Analyzer, opening SignalTap, programming a target through the Programmer window — and capture what you do as high-resolution screenshots and structured step records. Tasks tend to be defined at the level of a concrete engineering goal ("constrain this clock and show the resulting slack," "resolve this synthesis error," "set up an in-system logic analyser trigger") rather than a click-by-click script, so the value you add is knowing which menu, which report tab, and which setting actually gets there.

Expect a mix of demonstrating correct workflows and annotating where a model's proposed sequence would fail — a dialog that doesn't exist in that Quartus version, a constraint applied in the wrong file, a device family that doesn't support the feature being invoked. Version specificity matters: Quartus II (the pre-Prime line, through 13.x, with the Web Edition still commonly used for Cyclone and MAX parts) has different menu trees and toolflows from Quartus Prime, and screeners do check that you know which one is on your desk.

What the platform screens for

That the software is genuinely on your machine now. No licences, VMs, or hardware are provided. Web Edition is fine; the question is whether you can open it today.
Depth under follow-up. Expect a general question about your FPGA background followed by two or three narrowing probes into report navigation, constraint syntax, or a specific failure you debugged.
Display capability. Screenshots must exceed 2.5 megapixels — either one high-resolution monitor (QHD, 4K, 2560×1600, 3000×2000, 3440×1440 and similar all qualify) or two side-by-side 1920×1080+ displays captured as a single spanning image. A lone 1080p screen does not.
Evaluation judgment, meaning your ability to say precisely why a step is wrong rather than that it "looks off."

Logistics

Fully remote and asynchronous. Work is drawn from a task queue with no fixed shifts; contributors typically commit a stated number of hours per week and are paid hourly at an observed $55–65/hr, which varies with task type and assessed depth and is not guaranteed. There is no ongoing volume commitment from the platform — batches open and close — so treat this as supplemental engagement rather than a replacement for a full-time role.

Application Users - Quartus II on Windows - Code

What the work involves

What the platform screens for

Logistics

Interview prep — 10 questions