Part-time Physicist for Frontier AI Research

Mercor; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 83,000 - 165,000; Part time

Benefits offered by this job

Part-time up to 20 hours/week

Job summary

Mercor is recruiting accomplished physics researchers to contribute to AI systems for scientific reasoning. This position will be placed at a leading AI lab as part of their extended workforce.

You will review papers, author challenging physics problems, and evaluate model outputs across analytical and numerical tasks. Part-time: up to 20 hours/week; compensation reflects seniority and credentials.

Qualifications

• First-author or co-first-author publications in top physics journals.
• Doctorate or postdoctoral training from a top-20 institution.
• Competitive fellowships recognized internationally.
• Patents or grants as PI/Co-I indicating leadership in research.
• IPhO Gold/Silver/Bronze medal achievements.
• Active research roles (PhD candidate/postdoc/instructor).

Responsibilities

• Review and evaluate physics research papers for correctness, novelty, and significance.
• Author and review challenging physics problems for training frontier AI models.
• Evaluate model outputs across analytical, numerical, and literature reasoning tasks.
• Identify gaps where current models fail and provide expert insight.
• Collaborate with a small program team and senior contributors.

Skills

Strong publication record

Analytical reasoning

Collaborative teamwork

Research experience in physics

Education

PhD in physics or related STEM field

Postdoctoral training from a top-20 global institution

Competitive fellowship (NSF/Hertz/Sloan/Packard/Simons/etc)

Patents or grants as PI/Co-I

IPhO medal (Gold/Silver/Bronze)

Active researcher (PhD candidate/postdoc/instructor)

Job description

Mercor is recruiting accomplished physics researchers to contribute to AI systems for scientific reasoning. This position will be placed at a leading AI lab as part of their extended workforce.

You will review papers, author challenging physics problems, and evaluate model outputs across analytical and numerical tasks. Part-time: up to 20 hours/week; compensation reflects seniority and credentials.