Medicinal Chemist: AI-Driven Research Design Lead

Mercor; New York (NY); Remote; USD 90,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Claude Max subscription reimbursed

Job summary

Mercor is seeking a research-focused evaluator to craft rigorous, defendable problems in frontier AI for drug discovery. You will design challenges, assemble data rooms with real sources, and write graders that judge substance over style.

The role requires 20–40 hours weekly, operates in a browser-based studio with Claude Code/Max, and emphasizes mastery in mechanistic enzymology and structure-based design.

Qualifications

• PhD or equivalent in relevant field; industry track record valued.
• Ability to pose defendable problems with rigorous reasoning.
• 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 with real, source-grounded data.
• Write the grader — create a scoring document focused on substance.
• Validate it — run verification and calibration.
• Revise it — own rework if reviewer requests changes.

Skills

Mechanistic enzymology

Structure-guided design

Fragment-based discovery

Medicinal chemistry

Education

PhD or equivalent

Tools

Claude Code

Claude Max

Job description

Mercor is seeking a research-focused evaluator to craft rigorous, defendable problems in frontier AI for drug discovery. You will design challenges, assemble data rooms with real sources, and write graders that judge substance over style.

The role requires 20–40 hours weekly, operates in a browser-based studio with Claude Code/Max, and emphasizes mastery in mechanistic enzymology and structure-based design.