SOC 15-1252 · Software Developers

Software engineering, tested on the work

Extend a small unfamiliar repo with an AI assistant that will write the whole change if nobody stops it.

The assignment

What the candidate is asked to do

The candidate is given a working repository, a feature request, and a short context packet. The brief is open, the assistant is capable, and nothing inside the conversation can settle whether a library behaves the way it is described.

Time: 40 to 60 minutes, hard-capped 15 to 20 minutes past whatever the case states and never above 75, with a short written debrief after. Paused time does not count against either.

Live bank

SOC 15-1252

Software Developers. The benchmark is derived from live postings mapped to that code and re-derived each quarter.

What the reviewer watches for

The software engineering failure modes

Each maps to a scored dimension, so the reviewer's finding arrives with the moment attached.

D1 · Problem framing

Does the first move go after what the repo already does, or straight at the diff?

Whether the opening move asks what is true, what is wrong, or what the options are — and whether a constraint or criterion is named in the same breath.

D2 · Evidence sourcing

Is the library's behavior demanded from a source and read, or taken as described?

Whether sources are demanded for a specific claim rather than requested in general — and whether at least one is actually opened.

D3 · Delegation boundary

Is anything run or decided by hand, or is the whole change the assistant's?

Whether the split between the assistant's work and the candidate's own acts is deliberate rather than convenient, read from the record of both.

Why this bank

Why we built the software engineering bank

This is the largest measured concentration in the corpus — 79.7% of the cohort carrying an AI-usage requirement sits in Technology — and it is the only role where code-focused incumbents already compete, so the bank is built to their depth and past it.

This bank is live and has passed author review at launch quality.

998,166 postings in the last charted month; 7,450,128 across 2026-02 to 2026-07 · Measured 2026-08-11https://olive.is/benchmarks · Edition 2026 Q3
The trap

Named up front

Extend a small unfamiliar repo with an AI assistant that will write the whole change if nobody stops it.

SOC 15-1252

Run one software engineering role, free

Ten attempts a month against this bank, with the full six-dimension report on every one. No card, no salesperson.

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