Data Science Intern

Apply; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 50,000 - 76,000; Part time

Job summary

Mercor is seeking a Data Science Intern to join a fast-moving, metrics-driven engineering team. You will analyze data that impacts ranking, hiring efficiency, candidate experience, and revenue, and ship insights used by product and engineering.

You will work closely with engineers, PMs, and leadership to design experiments, evaluate LLM-powered systems, and build foundations of data integrity across the platform. In-person collaboration is expected.

Qualifications

• Pursuing a degree in a quantitative field (graduating 2026-2028).
• Strong fundamentals in statistics, SQL, and Python.
• Experience with experiment design, causal reasoning, and data analysis.
• Ability to communicate clearly with engineers, product managers, and leadership.
• Curiosity about LLM evaluation, retrieval, ranking, or marketplace dynamics (a plus).
• Excited to work in person and thrive in a fast-paced environment.
• Nice-to-haves: experience with dbt, dashboarding tools, recommendation/search metrics, or LLM/agent evaluation.

Responsibilities

• Defining north-star metrics and feature-level KPIs for ranking, interview analytics, and payouts systems.
• Designing and running A/B tests and quasi-experiments; translating results into product decisions within days.
• Building dashboards and lightweight data models that empower teams to self-serve insights.
• Instrumenting events with engineers and improving data quality, observability, and latency.
• Prototyping models (from baselines to gradient boosting) to improve matching and scoring systems.
• Evaluating LLM-powered agents through rubric design, human-in-the-loop experiments, and guardrail canary testing.

Skills

Statistics

SQL

Python

Experiment design

Causal reasoning

Data analysis

Communication

LLM evaluation

In-person collaboration

Education

Quantitative degree (graduating 2026–2028)

Tools

dbt

Dashboarding tools

Recommendation metrics

LLM/agent evaluation

Job description

About Mercor

Mercor's mission is to organize human intelligence to power the AI economy. We're a leading AI data company, building the layer between human expertise and frontier models. Millions of domain experts on the platform are paid over $4 million per day to train frontier AI models. Mercor's APEX benchmark family measures AI's real-world impact on professional work. Mercor Enterprise brings this same infrastructure to Fortune 500 companies: helping companies capture how their best people actually work, translating that expertise directly back into agents.

Mercor is creating a new category of work where expertise powers AI advancement. Achieving this requires an ambitious, fast-paced and deeply committed team. You'll work alongside researchers, operators, and AI companies at the forefront of shaping the systems that are redefining society. Mercor is a profitable Series C company valued at $10 billion. We work in-person five days a week in our San Francisco, NYC, or London offices.

About the Role

As a Data Science Intern at Mercor, you'll join a fast-moving, metrics-driven engineering team that powers critical decisions across the company. You'll analyze data that directly impacts ranking, hiring efficiency, candidate experience, and revenue. From day one, you'll work with real datasets, ship insights used by product and engineering, and prototype models that improve how we match talent to AI companies.

You'll work closely with engineers, PMs, and leadership, designing experiments, evaluating LLM-powered systems, and building the foundations of data integrity and visibility across the platform. You'll move quickly while maintaining a high bar for analytical rigor, clarity, and statistical correctness.

At the end of the process, you'll be team-matched to where you can have the most impact, on one of the following:

• Talent platform analytics – improving match quality, ranking, time-to-hire, and marketplace efficiency through experimentation and modeling.

• Applied AI/human data insights – partnering with leading AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) to design evaluation rubrics, run human-in-the-loop studies, and understand how experts shape post-training data for frontier models.

What You'll Work On

As an intern, you'll take on projects such as:

• Defining north-star metrics and feature-level KPIs for ranking, interview analytics, and payouts systems.

• Designing and running A/B tests and quasi-experiments; translating results into product decisions within days.

• Building dashboards and lightweight data models that empower teams to self-serve insights.

• Instrumenting events with engineers and improving data quality, observability, and latency.

• Prototyping models (from baselines to gradient boosting) to improve matching and scoring systems.

• Evaluating LLM-powered agents through rubric design, human-in-the-loop experiments, and guardrail canary testing.

What We're Looking For

• Pursuing a degree in a quantitative field (graduating 2026-2028).

• Strong fundamentals in statistics, SQL, and Python.

• Experience with experiment design, causal reasoning, and data analysis.

• Ability to communicate clearly with engineers, product managers, and leadership.

• Curiosity about LLM evaluation, retrieval, ranking, or marketplace dynamics (a plus).

• Excited to work in person and thrive in a fast-paced environment.

• Nice-to-haves: experience with dbt, dashboarding tools, recommendation/search metrics, or LLM/agent evaluation.

Why Mercor

• Impact: Your work powers how AI labs train and deploy their models

• Learning: Get early exposure to frontier AI research and engineering

• Growth: Work with a high-velocity team where interns ship to production

Benefits

• Bi-annual performance bonus structure

• Generous equity grant vested over 4 years

• Up to $15k Relocation bonus

• $10K housing bonus (if you live within 0.5 miles of our office)

• $1.5K monthly stipend for meals

• Free Equinox membership

• $200 monthly laundry reimbursement

• $200 monthly personal wellness reimbursement

• Health, Dental, Vision insurance