micro1

micro1 Inc. is a San Francisco company founded in 2021 by Ali Ansari, who is still CEO. It began as an AI-powered technical recruiting platform. It now supplies human experts who produce training and evaluation data for AI labs and enterprises.

Work lines: "Frontier evals", meaning expert data and evaluations for foundation models; "Real world robotics", meaning recording physical tasks for robot training; and "Contextual evals", meaning domain evaluations for enterprise AI agents.

Sept 12, 2025: $35M Series A at a $500M valuation, led by 01 Advisors. Run-rate revenue was $50M, up from $7M at the start of 2025.

Clients: Microsoft is named by TechCrunch (2025). Forbes (2026) names Microsoft, Amazon and the robotics company 1X, plus unnamed frontier labs.

"Coding Expert": $50–$120/hr. Contractor, remote. Skills: Python, Java, Go,.NET, TypeScript/JavaScript, Rust, Swift, Kotlin. Work is training models by reviewing code and giving feedback.

"Software Engineer": $30–$70/hr. Contractor, remote. Skills: algorithms, data structures, SQL, system design, cloud and similar. A search-engine snapshot of the same URL showed $30–$130/hr, so the band appears to have changed.

"Software Engineering": $100–$230 per task (the page says compensation is output-based and paid per task that meets spec). Contractor, 10–15 hrs/week.

Pay models: exactly one applies per project. Hourly means approved tracked hours. Pay-per-task means your hourly rate × a "Project Payout Multiple" per approved task, whatever the time spent. Flat fee means a fixed USD amount per approved deliverable, with no payment for rejected or incomplete submissions.

Experience and education: set per listing by recruiters from client requirements. There is no global minimum.

Conflict of interest: you must not currently be employed by a foundation-model company.

ID verification: after you pass the interview you validate your ID through a third-party provider. Accepted documents are passport, driver's licence or national ID. You must scan the original physical document live with your camera and take a selfie. English or Arabic IDs usually verify in minutes; other languages can take up to 72 hours of manual review.

Background check: KarmaCheck runs it at contract signing. Some pipelines require a fresh check even if you have done one before.

Payroll KYC: a separate KYC step happens in Deel and is mandatory before any payment.

Interview format: a real-time, recorded, spoken interview with open-ended questions tailored to the role's required skills. It lasts 20–40 minutes, about 7 minutes per skill assessed. Human recruiters review the recording. For technical roles, micro1's interview guide lists a coding challenge as one question type.

Certified skills (from July 2025 on) are reused. A later application can be "Fast-Track" (interview skipped) or a "Partial interview" covering only missing skills.

If you do not qualify, you can request detailed written feedback by email.

Time to hear back: "Under review" can take up to 48 hours. "Hiring manager reviewing" (vetted pool, human selection) can take up to 30 days. micro1 says there is no fixed timeline and that being in the pool does not guarantee placement.

Provider: Deel. Contracts are issued and signed in Deel, and payroll runs through payroll.micro1.ai, which is Deel. You can switch to paying an entity after the first contract.

Schedule: semi-monthly, in USD. Work from the 1st–15th is paid around the 20th; work from the 16th to month-end is paid around the 5th of the next month. Approvals land around the 3rd and 18th. Dates move to the next business day for weekends or US bank holidays. US contractors may wait one extra business day. Timing can vary by 1–2 days. For a late payment, contact your pipeline lead.

Hours to pay: Hubstaff data is exported at the end of each cycle and used for the Deel invoice. Hours do not show live in Deel.

Reported delays: no press reports of systemic micro1 payment delays found. On-time pay through Deel is the most consistent positive theme in Reddit threads (2025–2026); a few late-payment reports exist but did not form a pattern in one blog's tally.

Official position: pipelines last as long as the client has work. If a client closes a pipeline, micro1 says it will try to move you to a similar one, if one exists. Certification "does not guarantee placement on a project".

An Indeed reviewer reports more than 6 months from certification to a first project. Another personal review describes 9 days.

Once placed, people report uneven volume, pauses and early project endings. Some say advertised hourly roles turned into per-task work.

Misclassification: no claims found. Note that the expert agreement requires binding individual arbitration with a class waiver, which limits collective claims.

Mass offboardings: no press-reported event found. Individual abrupt removals have been reported, sometimes by direct message and without performance feedback, in 2026.

Biometric clause: the contractor agreement includes a standard biometric-data rights clause. micro1 says most text projects capture no voice, video or biometrics.

Unpaid rejected work: on flat-fee projects, rejected or incomplete work is not paid.

Amount: a flat fixed amount per successful referral, up to $3,000. The amount varies by job and is shown on each listing. It is not a percentage of earnings, and each referred person yields one payout, tied to their first match. There is no cap on the number of referrals.

Trigger: the referred expert must be selected and complete 10 hours of work, or the equivalent tasks on pay-per-task projects. Inconsistency: a "How it works" graphic on the same page says 20 hours.

Who can refer: anyone, including people who are not certified, through refer.micro1.ai. You must create a new referral account to give consent. Referrer and candidate must both be outside restricted regions. The candidate must apply through your link; an earlier independent application is not attributed.

Payout: credited to a micro1 wallet and withdrawable at any time. Paid through a separate payout partner, not Deel. If a role's rate changes, candidates who applied earlier keep the original amount.

Ratings: Trustpilot shows 4.7/5 from 10,824 reviews (10,501 in the last 12 months), 83% 5-star and 3% 1-star. Many reviews describe the Zara interview right after taking it, so they reflect the application experience more than paid work.

Positive: the Zara interview feels conversational and the application is smooth.

Positive: once placed, pay through Deel is on time and leads are responsive.

Negative (strongest theme): certified but idle. People wait weeks to months with "Hiring manager reviewing" or "Not selected" outcomes.