Remote | Software Engineer - Open Source Contributions — $50–$100/hour

24-MAG LLC connects experienced professionals with remote consulting opportunities across technical, evaluation, and project-based workstreams. The Software Engineer will contribute to open-source development by implementing features, resolving bugs, refactoring codebases, optimizing performance, and solving complex algorithmic problems across multiple programming languages. The role also involves code validation, peer review, technical documentation, and evaluating AI-generated software solutions.

Responsibilities:

• Develop and implement new features within established open-source repositories
• Extend existing systems while respecting project architecture and contribution standards
• Translate functional requirements into maintainable implementations
• Integrate new functionality with existing modules and dependencies
• Validate changes against expected project behaviour
• Analyse complex software defects
• Reproduce reported issues reliably
• Trace execution and data flow to identify root causes
• Develop robust fixes rather than surface-level workarounds
• Validate corrections across relevant edge cases and regression scenarios
• Refactor legacy or difficult-to-maintain code
• Improve code clarity, structure, and modularity
• Reduce unnecessary complexity
• Preserve expected behaviour while restructuring implementations
• Align changes with established repository conventions
• Identify performance bottlenecks
• Analyse computational and architectural inefficiencies
• Improve runtime or resource utilisation where appropriate
• Compare alternative implementation strategies
• Ensure optimisation work preserves correctness and maintainability
• Work across codebases using Python, Java, Rust, C++, TypeScript, Go, C#, or related languages
• Adapt quickly to language-specific ecosystems and tooling
• Review equivalent implementations across different languages
• Apply appropriate language conventions and engineering practices
• Maintain technical consistency across multi-language projects
• Apply advanced algorithms and data structures to challenging technical problems
• Analyse multifaceted constraints
• Compare multiple solution pathways
• Evaluate time and space complexity
• Develop efficient and technically defensible implementations
• Review code for correctness and output consistency
• Identify subtle implementation defects
• Validate behaviour against project requirements
• Assess maintainability and coding quality
• Apply strong engineering standards throughout review workflows
• Review proposed changes from other contributors
• Evaluate implementation quality and architectural fit
• Provide clear and actionable technical feedback
• Collaborate remotely on issue resolution and feature development
• Support consistent contribution standards across projects
• Produce concise technical write-ups
• Explain solution design and implementation decisions
• Document important architectural or algorithmic considerations
• Communicate debugging findings clearly
• Maintain useful project documentation where required
• Review AI-generated software solutions
• Assess code for correctness, completeness, efficiency, and maintainability
• Identify algorithmic or implementation weaknesses
• Provide structured feedback supporting model improvement
• Contribute real-world engineering judgement to AI-training workflows

Requirements:

• Expert-level proficiency in at least two of the following: Python, C++, Java, Rust, TypeScript, Go, or C#
• Extensive experience contributing to open-source software
• Demonstrated experience with feature development
• Strong bug-fixing and debugging ability
• Experience refactoring established codebases
• Strong performance-optimisation skills
• Strong understanding of algorithms and data structures
• Ability to analyse complex constraints and multiple possible solution approaches
• Strong code-review and validation skills
• Excellent attention to technical detail
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to produce clear technical documentation
• Comfortable working independently in a remote collaborative environment
• Able to deliver well-documented, high-quality code under project deadlines
• Competitive-programming or advanced coding-problem experience is highly valuable
• No prior AI-training or model-evaluation experience is required