Drug Discovery Scientist - PhD

Mercor; Paris; Remote; EUR 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Claude Max subscription reimbursement

Job summary

Mercor in Paris seeks a senior researcher to design frontier AI evaluation problems for drug research. You craft realistic, defensible prompts and assemble evidence-grounded data rooms. You'll write graders, specify evaluation criteria, and oversee verification and revision cycles.

This role blends deep domain science with rigorous reasoning and high expectations for construct validity. Minimum 20 hours per week, up to 40, with in-browser studio work and Claude Code access; Claude Max

Qualifications

• PhD or equivalent in a relevant field.
• Ability to pose defensible, non-patternable problems.
• Comfort judging reasoning quality, not just final answers.

Responsibilities

• Design research problems and identify hidden basins and forcing chains.
• Assemble a data room with real, source-grounded data for each task.
• Write a grading document that scores memos on substance and reasoning.

Skills

Enzymology

Structure-guided design

Drug discovery

Scientific reasoning

Education

PhD or equivalent

Tools

Claude Code

Job description

About the role

This is an evaluation framework for frontier AI models in drug research and development. Domain experts write realistic research problems wrapped around messy evidence worlds. The model works offline in a sandbox with open-source scientific tooling, receiving incomplete, indirect and sometimes misleading data, and must reach a defensible conclusion. The answer is present in the evidence but never stated.

Your job is to build a research problem so realistic and well-constructed that the model has to genuinely reason to solve it - it can't pattern-match or look the answer up.

What you'll deliver

Three things per task: the prompt, the data room, and the grading document.

1. Design the challenge - identify the hidden basin and the forcing chain that makes one conclusion inevitable.
2. Build the world - assemble a data room from real, source-grounded data. Every decisive value traces to a real source.
3. Write the grader - a grading document that scores a submitted memo on substance, not style or method.
4. Validate it - run verification and calibration before submission.
5. Revise it - you own the rework if a reviewer requests changes.

You are the final authority on every scientific and difficulty question in your task.

Who we're looking for

• Working expertise in mechanistic enzymology, structure-guided peptide or antibody design, fragment-based discovery, or structure-based medicinal chemistry - PhD or equivalent industry track record.
• You can pose a problem whose answer you can defend rigorously, but which a strong solver cannot shortcut.
• Comfortable judging reasoning quality, not just final answers.

Commitment

Minimum 20 hours per week, up to 40.

Tooling

Work happens in a browser-based studio plus Claude Code. A Claude Max subscription is required and is fully reimbursed.