6-Week Part-Time Materials Scientist for AI Benchmarks

Mercor; San Francisco (CA); Remote; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Part time

Job summary

Mercor is hiring PhD and Master's scientists to author AI evaluation tasks (Sci Code) for a new benchmark in scientific computing. You will author original, executable research problems that today's frontier models cannot solve.

Source your own material, write prompts, and build grading criteria; you will calibrate against frontier models so a task ships only when strong models fail more often than they succeed. This six-week, part-time engagement starts immediately.

Qualifications

• PhD in materials science, materials engineering, applied physics, chemistry, or chemical engineering.
• Demonstrated depth in semiconductor materials and molecular modeling.
• Working proficiency in Python, R, or another relevant programming language for scientific computing.
• Comfortable with Git/GitHub and running code in Docker — authoring runs through a pull-request workflow with automated quality checks.

Responsibilities

• Source your own material: a published paper, a Kaggle dataset, an open-source repository, or a scenario you design.
• Write scientific prompts based on the input.
• Build the grading criteria that define a correct answer.
• Calibrate against frontier models — a task ships only when strong models fail it more often than they succeed.

Skills

Python

R

Git/GitHub

Docker

Education

PhD in materials science, materials engineering, applied physics, chemistry, chemical engineering

Tools

Git/GitHub

Docker

Job description

Mercor is hiring PhD and Master's scientists to author AI evaluation tasks (Sci Code) for a new benchmark in scientific computing. You will author original, executable research problems that today's frontier models cannot solve.

Source your own material, write prompts, and build grading criteria; you will calibrate against frontier models so a task ships only when strong models fail more often than they succeed. This six-week, part-time engagement starts immediately.