AI-Driven Drug Discovery Scientist — Research Design

Mercor; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Mercor is seeking a candidate to craft advanced evaluation frameworks for frontier AI models in drug discovery. You will design realistic research problems, build data rooms grounded in real sources, and write rigorous graders to assess reasoning quality and solution defensibility.

You will work 20–40 hours per week in a browser-based studio environment with Claude tools, contributing to continuous verification and rework cycles as needed.

Qualifications

• PhD or equivalent in enzymology, medicinal chemistry or related field.
• Ability to defend a problem rigorously and prevent shortcuts.
• Experience judging reasoning quality, not just final answers.

Responsibilities

• Design the challenge — identify the hidden basin and forcing chain.
• Build the world — assemble a data room from real, source-grounded data.
• Write the grader — draft a scoring document for submissions.
• Validate it — run verification and calibration before submission.
• Revise it — own rework if changes are requested.

Skills

Mechanistic enzymology

Structure-guided design

Fragment-based discovery

Medicinal chemistry

Education

PhD or equivalent industry track record

Tools

Claude Code

Claude Max

Job description

Mercor is seeking a candidate to craft advanced evaluation frameworks for frontier AI models in drug discovery. You will design realistic research problems, build data rooms grounded in real sources, and write rigorous graders to assess reasoning quality and solution defensibility.

You will work 20–40 hours per week in a browser-based studio environment with Claude tools, contributing to continuous verification and rework cycles as needed.