Overview: How Merge evaluates engineers

A Merge assessment puts candidates inside an actual engineering workflow: they read a real codebase, review a pull request, leave comments on bugs, refactors, and security risks, and then iterate as an AI responds to their feedback and opens a revised PR. This loop runs until the session timer expires, producing a rich record of how each candidate thinks and communicates as an engineer — not just whether they can reverse a linked list.

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What makes a Merge assessment different

Merge assessments are grounded in real engineering work — reading a codebase, reviewing a PR, and iterating based on feedback — rather than puzzle-solving under pressure. Candidates engage with the kind of material they would encounter on their first week on the job: existing code with real tradeoffs, real ambiguity, and real consequences. The result is signal your team can discuss with confidence, anchored in observable behavior rather than abstract scoring.

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Assessment structure

Each assessment follows the same four-step loop, repeated until time expires:

1. Read the codebase — The candidate explores the repository to understand the project’s structure, patterns, and conventions.
2. Review the pull request — The candidate leaves inline comments identifying bugs, refactor opportunities, security risks, and other concerns, just as they would in a real code review.
3. Receive an AI revision — Merge’s AI processes the candidate’s comments and opens a fresh PR revision that responds to their feedback.
4. Iterate — The candidate reviews the revised PR, refines earlier comments, and adds new observations. This loop continues until the session ends.

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Configuration options

You control three axes when creating an assessment. Together, they let you target the exact bar your team is hiring for.

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What you receive

When a candidate completes a session, Merge generates a scorecard that captures how they performed across the full review loop. The scorecard shows:

• Reasoning quality — how accurately the candidate identified real issues versus noise
• Prioritization — whether they led with the most critical problems or buried them in minor nits
• Iteration behavior — how their feedback evolved across PR revisions, including whether they incorporated responses thoughtfully
• Communication — the clarity, specificity, and professionalism of their written comments

You receive a structured record you can share with your hiring panel, compare across candidates, and use as a foundation for a debrief conversation.