Biology Expert

Mercor; United States; Remote; USD 96,000 - 145,000; Full time

Job summary

Mercor is currently listing open biologist opportunities for AI training and evaluation. This standing listing connects researchers with short-notice projects, setting the rate per project rather than posting separate openings.

Past rates range from $70 to $105 per hour, determined by scope and depth. The role emphasizes rigorous experimental design and clear rationale, with projects invited when matching backgrounds exist.

Qualifications

• Graduate degree in biology or a related life science.
• Strong written communication to explain reasoning.
• Ability to handle ambiguous tasks and flag unclear instructions.

Responsibilities

• Match biologists in the network to projects by framing research problems, data, controls, and reference answers.
• Grade model-written experimental designs and interpretations for validity and statistical fit.
• Flag where model answers would fail bench conditions given organism, assay limits, or reagent availability.

Skills

Graduate degree in biology

Clear written communication

Ambiguity tolerance

Education

Graduate degree in biology

Job description

The research teams behind the best-known AI models come to Mercor for biology judgment they can't generate on their own. Your standards and expertise become the rubric that frontier AI is graded against.

This is a standing listing for biologists who want AI training and evaluation work, not a specific job opening. It stays open whether or not a matching project is running this week.

New projects start on short notice, so instead of posting and pulling a listing each time, we keep one open per field and draw from it when one begins.

What the work looks like

We match biologists in the network to projects like:

• Writing a research problem from your own work, with the system, the data, and the controls, plus the reference answer a model's attempt gets graded against

• Grading model-written experimental designs and interpretations: whether the controls rule out what they claim to, whether the statistics suit the design, whether the conclusion follows from the figure

• Flagging where a model gives a textbook-correct answer that would not survive at the bench, given the organism, the limits of the assay, or what the reagents can actually show

Past rates have run $70 to $105 an hour, set per project by scope and depth.

What we're looking for

• A graduate degree in biology or a related life science, with research experience

• Clear written communication, since most of the work involves explaining your reasoning

• Comfort with ambiguous tasks, and willingness to flag unclear instructions

Where you trained matters less than whether you designed and ran the experiments yourself, recently enough to explain the calls you made.

How it works

We verify your background and add you to the biology pool.

When a project needs biology expertise, we invite matching people from the pool to that specific listing. It names the rate, the hours, and the client, and any hiring decision is made there.

What to expect

This listing does not accept or reject candidates, so you will not get a decision on it. We reach out when a project matches your background. Depending on what our clients are running, that can be within a week or several months.

Finishing the domain expert interview and joining every network you qualify for both improve your odds of being matched. You only need to sign up once to be eligible across all of them.