September 2026 · Jobs Updated Daily

Build Your Career InData AnnotationAnd AI Training

The career platform for the AI workforce. Find data annotation jobs, RLHF trainer roles, and AI evaluator gigs from Scale AI, Surge AI, Mercor and others, then train and certify for higher-paying specialist work.

Scale AISurge AIMercorDataAnnotationHandshake AIMicro1AfterQueryHireCadeScale AISurge AIMercorDataAnnotationHandshake AIMicro1AfterQueryHireCade

Market Intelligence

Top Data Annotation
Companies Hiring in 2026

Every foundation model still needs human training data. These companies hire data annotators, RLHF trainers, and AI evaluators. Open roles are listed below.

$2.1B

Global Market Size (2024)

$17.1B

Projected Market (2030)

41.2%

CAGR

500K+

Active Annotators Worldwide

Top Data Annotation Companies8 companies
View all company pages
CompanyFoundedRevenueValuationFoundersHQTeamStatus
Scale AI jobs

Scale AI is the leading AI data foundry behind frontier language models, autonomous vehicles, and U.S. government AI programs, providing human data labeling, RLHF, and model evaluation at scale.

Official site
2016$2B+ ARR$29B
Alexandr WangLucy Guo
San Francisco, CA
1,000+
Unicorn
Surge AI jobs

Surge AI is a bootstrapped, zero-VC RLHF and data labeling platform built by Edwin Chen, powering frontier labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google with high-quality human feedback and training data.

Official site
2020$1.4B+ ARR$25B
Edwin Chen
San Francisco, CA
100 to 150
Hot
Mercor jobs

Mercor is an AI-native talent marketplace connecting vetted domain experts such as doctors, lawyers, and engineers directly with frontier AI labs for RLHF, evaluation, and specialized training data at massive scale.

Official site
2023$2B+ ARR$20B
Brendan FoodyAdarsh HiremathSurya Midha
San Francisco, CA
150 to 250
Hot
DataAnnotation jobs

DataAnnotation hires remote contractors to train and evaluate AI models, from generalist review work to specialist tracks in coding, law, medicine, and finance. Its own site reports more than 100,000 contributors and over $150M paid out to date.

Official site
-Not disclosed-
-
Remote
100,000+ contributors
Hot
Handshake AI jobs

Handshake AI turns the career platform's network of 20M+ students, alumni, and PhD candidates into a data labeling and RLHF marketplace, supplying expert human feedback to frontier AI labs alongside its core recruiting business.

Official site
2013$1.1B+ ARR$3.5B
Garrett Lord
San Francisco, CA
1,000+
Hot
Micro1 jobs

Micro1 is a fast-scaling AI training data platform that pivoted from its AI recruiting agent, Zara, into expert data labeling and RLHF, vetting doctors, lawyers, and engineers for frontier AI labs.

Official site
2022$300M+ ARR$2.5B
Ali Ansari
Palo Alto, CA
100 to 300
Hot
AfterQuery jobs

AfterQuery is a Y Combinator-backed applied AI research lab building expert-curated datasets and RL environments that capture professional reasoning in law, medicine, finance, and engineering for frontier model training.

Official site
2025$100M+ ARR$300M
Spencer MateegaCarlos Georgescu
San Francisco, CA
30 to 40
Hot
HireCade jobs

HireCade is a bootstrapped, founder-led AI recruiting and video interview platform that sources, vets, and places domain experts for AI data annotation and RLHF work with frontier AI labs.

Official site
2025$110 Million+ ARR-
Ritu Ranjan
Remote
12
Growing

Revenue and valuation figures come from public reports, Crunchbase, and industry estimates. Treat them as approximate, and check the company's own site before relying on any of them.

Live Job Feed

Open Data Annotation Jobs
Right Now

Data annotation, RLHF, and AI evaluator roles, refreshed throughout the day. 786 open roles listed.

$75 to $100 /hr
Remote
2 days ago
MedicineAI evaluationLLM training

Showing 786 of 786 positions

The path

From entry level labeling to specialist AI work

Most people start on commodity annotation and stay there. The higher rates go to evaluators and domain specialists, so this is the route from one to the other.

  1. 01

    Discover

    Browse live data annotation, RLHF, and AI evaluation openings, updated from a single feed.

    Browse jobs
  2. 02

    Assess

    Take a free skills check on rubrics and model evaluation, and see where your judgement is weak.

    Start the assessment
  3. 03

    Train

    Work through courses from annotation foundations up to specialist code, reasoning, and language tracks.

    See courses
  4. 04

    Certify

    Finish an assessed capstone and get a certificate you can attach to applications.

    View certification

Training

Train for the work employers are actually screening for

Courses on rubrics, model evaluation, and specialist domains. Start with the free foundations course.

All courses →

Common questions

Data annotation jobs FAQ

What is a data annotation job?

Data annotators label text, images, audio, or video so machine learning models can learn. In 2026 that often means ranking chatbot answers, writing better responses, or checking whether an AI output is accurate and safe, not only drawing boxes on photos.

How much do data annotators make?

Pay on this board typically starts around $12/hr for entry level review work and reaches somewhere between $50 and $70/hr for senior, specialist, or on site QA. RLHF and expert domain evaluation usually sits above general labeling. Always check the listing, rates vary by company, location, and skill.

What is RLHF?

RLHF means reinforcement learning from human feedback. You compare two model answers, pick the better one, and often explain why. Labs use that preference data to align assistants. It is one of the most common well-paid remote AI trainer jobs.

Are data annotation jobs remote?

Most roles listed here are remote, including global and US-only remote. A few specialist jobs (for example autonomous-vehicle QA) may be on-site. Use the remote jobs page to see only work-from-home listings.

How do I apply?

Open a role on DataAnnotationJobs.org to read the details, then use Apply to go to the employer’s application. We aggregate openings from companies such as Scale AI, Surge AI, Mercor, Micro1, and HireCade, hiring happens on their sites.

Looking for a specific type of role? See RLHF jobs, data annotator salary, or all guides.