Drug Discovery Scientist - PhD - AI Trainer

Mercor; New York (NY); Remote; USD 80,000 - 140,000; Part time

Benefits offered by this job

Claude Max reimbursement

Job summary

Mercor is seeking a PhD-level scientist to craft realistic frontier AI evaluation problems for drug R&D. The role involves designing challenges, assembling data rooms from real sources, and writing rigorous graders to assess reasoning quality.

You will validate and revise the framework, committing to 20–40 hours per week in a browser-based studio environment with Claude Code access. Strong expertise in enzymology or medicinal chemistry is required.

Qualifications

• Working expertise in mechanistic enzymology or structure-based design.
• Experience with fragment-based discovery or related medicinal chemistry approaches.
• PhD or equivalent industry track record in relevant fields.

Responsibilities

• Design the evaluation challenge framing the problem and forcing logic.
• Build a data room with source-grounded, traceable evidence.
• Write a grading document to evaluate candidate memos for substance.
• Validate the design and calibration before submission.
• Revise the framework based on reviewer requests.

Skills

Mechanistic enzymology

Structure-guided design

Fragment-based discovery

Medicinal chemistry

Education

PhD or equivalent industry track record

Job description

About the role

This is an evaluation framework for frontier AI models in drug research and development. Domain experts write realistic research problems wrapped around messy evidence worlds. The model works offline in a sandbox with open-source scientific tooling, receiving incomplete, indirect and sometimes misleading data, and must reach a defensible conclusion. The answer is present in the evidence but never stated.

Your job is to build a research problem so realistic and well-constructed that the model has to genuinely reason to solve it — it can't pattern-match or look the answer up.

What you'll deliver

Three things per task: the prompt, the data room, and the grading document.

1. Design the challenge — identify the hidden basin and the forcing chain that makes one conclusion inevitable.

2. Build the world — assemble a data room from real, source-grounded data. Every decisive value traces to a real source.

3. Write the grader — a grading document that scores a submitted memo on substance, not style or method.

4. Validate it — run verification and calibration before submission.

5. Revise it — you own the rework if a reviewer requests changes.

You are the final authority on every scientific and difficulty question in your task.

Who we're looking for

• Working expertise in mechanistic enzymology, structure-guided peptide or antibody design, fragment-based discovery, or structure-based medicinal chemistry — PhD or equivalent industry track record.

• You can pose a problem whose answer you can defend rigorously, but which a strong solver cannot shortcut.

• Comfortable judging reasoning quality, not just final answers.

Commitment

Minimum 20 hours per week, up to 40.

Tooling

Work happens in a browser-based studio plus Claude Code. A Claude Max subscription is required and is fully reimbursed.