AI Assessment Specialist - PhD - AI Trainer

Mercor; Philadelphia (Philadelphia County); On-site; USD 50,000 - 70,000; Part time

Job summary

Mercor is seeking expert computer scientists to author and review high-quality academic assessment content for an AI research initiative. You will write and verify rigorous multiple-choice questions across core CS domains, evaluate solution quality, and help establish gold-standard benchmarks used to advance AI capabilities.

You will be assigned one of two task types: Question Authoring or Question Verification, with responsibilities spanning question creation, difficulty rating, and detailed

Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science or doctoral candidate.
• Strong command of graduate-level CS theory, algorithms, systems design, and ML.
• Excellent written English and ability to express complex ideas clearly.
• Publications or competitive programming background is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Author original CS questions that test deep conceptual understanding.
• Verify questions for accuracy, clarity, and rigor with edits when needed.
• Rate difficulty: Medium, Hard, or Expert.
• Provide 1 correct answer and 9 plausible but incorrect alternatives.
• Write step-by-step Chain-of-Thought solutions in Markdown.
• Supply 1-5 academic references per question.
• For verification tasks, flag clarity and solvability issues with justifications.

Skills

Graduate-level CS theory

Algorithms

Systems design

Machine learning

English proficiency

Education

PhD in Computer Science

Master's degree considered

Job description

Role Overview

We are seeking expert computer scientists to author and review high-quality academic assessment content for an AI research initiative. You will write and verify rigorous multiple-choice questions across core computer science domains, evaluate solution quality, and help establish gold-standard benchmarks used to advance AI capabilities.

You will be assigned one of two task types:

• Question Authoring - Create original, challenging multiple-choice questions in your area of computer science expertise, rate their difficulty, and submit them for review.

• Question Verification - Review pre-written questions for accuracy, clarity, and rigor. Edit where needed, rate difficulty, and document any changes made.

Computer Science Domains Covered

Accelerator / GPU Kernel Engineering, Formal Methods & Automated Reasoning, Computer Architecture & Accelerators, Distributed Systems, DevOps & Site Reliability, Data Engineering & Databases, Cloud & Infrastructure, OS & Systems Kernel, Machine Learning Engineering, Web & API Development, Embedded Systems Engineering, Computer Graphics & Game Development, Mobile Engineering.

Key Responsibilities

• Author original computer science questions that test deep conceptual understanding, not surface-level recall

• Ensure questions are unambiguous, self-contained, and precisely defined - all necessary information must be in the problem statement

• Rate each question's difficulty: Medium (intro undergraduate), Hard (advanced undergraduate), or Expert (post-graduate and above)

• Provide 1 correct answer and 9 plausible but subtly incorrect alternatives that challenge expert-level solvers

• 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 (peer-reviewed journals, university repositories)

• For verification tasks: flag issues with clarity, completeness, precision, or solvability and justify any edits made

Ideal Qualifications

• PhD or doctoral candidate in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a closely related field

• Master's degree considered for candidates with exceptional depth in a specific subdomain

• Strong command of graduate-level CS theory, algorithms, systems design, and/or machine learning

• Research publications, industry experience at top tech companies, or competitive programming background is a strong plus

• Excellent written English and ability to express complex ideas clearly and concisely

More About the Opportunity

• Expected commitment: 10+ hours/week

• Asynchronous, fully remote work