Machine Learning Expert - Fully Remote | Upto $90/hr

mercor; India; Remote; INR 10,012,000 - 12,014,000; Part time

Job summary

Mercor is seeking a Human Baseliner for Open-Ended ML Research Tasks. This contract role involves tackling open-ended machine learning research within defined time and compute budgets, working remotely with access to a Linux sandbox and a suite of AI tools.

You will record sessions, complete pre- and post-task questionnaires, and submit final deliverables for evaluation. A strong ML background and experience with modern frameworks are essential.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of machine learning experience; time in a PhD program counts.
• Attended a top-100 university or worked at FAANG or a comparable company.
• Experience with PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow.
• Deep expertise in at least one focus area: pretraining, RLHF, architecture design, or related.

Responsibilities

• Tackle open-ended machine learning research tasks within fixed time and compute budgets.
• Work independently in a sandboxed Linux environment with internet access.
• Utilize preferred tools, including IDEs and AI coding assistants like Cursor, Claude Code, and ChatGPT.
• Record full working sessions via screen recording.
• Complete pre-task and post-task questionnaires as part of evaluation.
• Submit final work product, screen recording, and questionnaires for evaluation.

Skills

Machine learning research

Open-ended ML tasks

Education

Top-100 university or FAANG/comparable

Tools

PyTorch

JAX

TensorFlow

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: Human Baseliner for Open-Ended ML Research Tasks

Type: Contract

Compensation: $75–$90/hour

Location: Remote

Commitment: 20+ hours/week

Role Responsibilities

• Attempt open-ended machine learning research tasks under a fixed time and compute budget.
• Work independently in a sandboxed Linux environment with internet access.
• Use preferred tools, including IDEs and AI coding assistants like Cursor , Claude Code , and ChatGPT .
• Record full working sessions via screen recording.
• Complete pre-task and post-task questionnaires.
• Submit final work product, screen recording, and completed questionnaires for evaluation.

Qualifications Must-Have

• 3+ years of machine learning experience . Time in a PhD program counts.
• Attended a top-100 university or worked at FAANG or a comparable company .
• Experience with PyTorch , JAX , or TensorFlow .
• Deep expertise in at least one focus area: pretraining, PPO , reward shaping, fine-tuning, LoRA , RLHF , architecture design, contrastive training, generative modeling, multilingual experience, or data pipelines.

Required Domain Expertise

• Practical experience in Pretraining , Reinforcement learning , Post-training , Dataset curation , or Model architecture .

Logistics

• One baseline attempt per contractor per task.
• Each task may only be attempted once.
• All work is confidential and covered by NDA.
• Compute and environment are provided; no personal GPU required.