Bio PhD AI Benchmark Architect (Part-Time, 6-Week Project)

Mercor; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 69,000 - 103,000; Full time

Job summary

Mercor is hiring PhD and Master's scientists to author AI evaluation tasks for a new benchmark in scientific computing. You will create original, executable research problems that today’s frontier models cannot solve, sourced from papers, datasets, or your own scenarios.

We expect depth in at least two subdomains like ecology, biochemistry, or genetics, and proficiency in Python or R with Docker/GitHub workflows.

Qualifications

• PhD in biology, biological sciences, biochemistry, genetics, ecology, or a closely related field.
• Demonstrated depth in at least two of ecology, biochemistry, genetics.
• 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

Scientific computing

Education

PhD in biology

Masters in biology/related field

Tools

Git/GitHub

Docker

Job description

Mercor is hiring PhD and Master's scientists to author AI evaluation tasks for a new benchmark in scientific computing. You will create original, executable research problems that today’s frontier models cannot solve, sourced from papers, datasets, or your own scenarios.

We expect depth in at least two subdomains like ecology, biochemistry, or genetics, and proficiency in Python or R with Docker/GitHub workflows.