Biology Expert - Fully Remote | Up To $75/Hr

Mercor; Sydney; Remote; AUD 118,000 - 147,000; Full time

Job summary

Mercor seeks an Applied Biology Benchmark Specialist for a remote contract role. The candidate will craft questions across Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, Industrial and Synthetic Biology, Medical Research & Drug Discovery, and related fields.

Requirements include a PhD or doctoral candidate in biology and excellence in written English. The role supports 10+ hours per week and pays $60–$75/hour.

Qualifications

• PhD in Biology or related field required; doctoral candidate acceptable.
• Master’s degree considered for exceptional depth in subfield.
• Strong command of graduate‑level biology concepts, experimental design, and data interpretation.
• Excellent written English and ability to express complex ideas clearly.

Responsibilities

• Create biology questions across pharma, biotech, medical research, and agrifood biology.
• Ensure questions are clear, self-contained, and well-defined.
• Rate difficulty and provide 1 correct answer with 9 alternatives.
• Provide step-by-step Chain-of-Thought solutions in Markdown.
• Offer 1–5 academic references from reputable sources.
• Flag clarity or solvability issues and justify edits.

Skills

PhD in Biology

Strong written English

Graduate-level biology concepts

Education

PhD in Biology

Master's degree considered

Job description

About the job

Mercor connects elite creative and technical talent with leading AI research labs. Headquartered in San Francisco, our investors include Benchmark, General Catalyst, Peter Thiel, Adam D'Angelo, Larry Summers, and Jack Dorsey.

Position: Applied Biology Benchmark Specialist
Type: Contract
Compensation: $60–$75/hour
Location: Remote
Commitment: 10+ hours/week

Role Responsibilities

• Author original biology questions to test deep conceptual understanding in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, Industrial and Synthetic Biology, Medical Research & Drug Discovery, and Agricultural, Environmental & Food Biology.
• Ensure questions are unambiguous, self-contained, and precisely defined with all necessary information in the problem statement.
• Rate each question's difficulty as Medium, Hard, or Expert and provide 1 correct answer with 9 plausible alternatives.
• Write step-by-step Chain-of-Thought solutions with clear, concise intermediate steps in markdown format.
• Supply 1–5 academic references per question from reputable sources such as peer-reviewed journals or university repositories.
• For verification tasks, flag issues with clarity, completeness, precision, or solvability and justify any edits made.

Qualifications

Must-Have

• PhD or doctoral candidate in Biology, Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, Neuroscience, or a closely related field.
• Master's degree considered for candidates with exceptional depth in a specific subdomain.
• Strong command of graduate-level biological concepts, experimental design, and data interpretation.
• Excellent written English and ability to express complex ideas clearly and concisely.

Preferred

• Research publications or laboratory experience in biological sciences is a strong plus.