Frontier Physics Researcher: Gold-Standard Solver-Auditor

Obsidian; Greater London; On-site; GBP 82,000 - 138,000; Full time

Job summary

Obsidian is seeking expert physics researchers to author and verify golden reference solutions for the CritPt benchmark (arXiv:2509.26574v3). You will produce 100%-human-verified data used to evaluate frontier physics reasoning.

Responsibilities include solving research-level problems end-to-end, auditing peer work, and adjudicating between competing solutions. Expect ~10 hours/week across an 8–10 week window, paid hourly.

Qualifications

• PhD or equivalent with strong publication record in the target subfield.
• Hands-on familiarity with multiple canonical methods and literature.
• Ability to produce derivations, code, and verifiable references.
• Experience presenting and defending research results.

Responsibilities

• Solve research-level physics challenges end-to-end with verifiable derivations, code, and peer-reviewed references
• Decompose challenges into standalone checkpoint sub-problems requiring genuine physical reasoning
• Author Python answer templates with auto-grading functions for symbolic or numerical answers
• Audit submitted solutions for correctness, scope, and method soundness; provide actionable feedback
• Adjudicate between parallel solver attempts and decide golden reference
• Document chain-of-thought reasoning, error tolerances, and verification test cases

Skills

Strong written English

Research mindset

Analytical reasoning

Education

PhD in subfield

Postdoc experience

Tools

LaTeX

Python

Jupyter

SymPy

Job description

Obsidian is seeking expert physics researchers to author and verify golden reference solutions for the CritPt benchmark (arXiv:2509.26574v3). You will produce 100%-human-verified data used to evaluate frontier physics reasoning.

Responsibilities include solving research-level problems end-to-end, auditing peer work, and adjudicating between competing solutions. Expect ~10 hours/week across an 8–10 week window, paid hourly.