AI Benchmark Scientist: Physics PhD in Scientific Computing

Obsidian; Dallas (TX); On-site; USD 9,919,000 - 14,878,000; Full time

Job summary

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

In collaboration with leading AI labs, you will source your own material, write scientific prompts, build the grading criteria, and calibrate against frontier models so a task ships only when it withstands rigorous testing. The role is 6 weeks, part-time, with immediate start.

Qualifications

• PhD in physics, applied physics, or closely related field.
• Demonstrated depth in at least two of the following subdomains: condensed matter, optics, quantum information/computing, computational physics, astrophysics, particle physics.
• 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

Education

PhD in physics, applied physics, or closely related field

Tools

Git/GitHub

Docker

Job description

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

In collaboration with leading AI labs, you will source your own material, write scientific prompts, build the grading criteria, and calibrate against frontier models so a task ships only when it withstands rigorous testing. The role is 6 weeks, part-time, with immediate start.