Physics Expert - Fully Remote | Upto $77/hr

Obsidian; New York (NY); Remote; USD 60,000 - 90,000; Part time

Benefits offered by this job

Fully remote

Flexible schedule

Job summary

Obsidian is seeking expert physicists to author and review high-quality academic assessment content for an AI research initiative. You will write and verify rigorous MCQs across core physics topics, evaluate solution quality, and help establish gold-standard benchmarks.

You will be assigned one of two task types: authoring original questions or verifying pre-written ones, with autonomy for asynchronous work.

Qualifications

• Author original physics questions that test deep conceptual understanding.
• Write clear, self-contained problems with all necessary data.
• Provide step-by-step reasoning and references when required.

Responsibilities

• Create challenging multiple-choice questions for AI research.
• Rate difficulty: Medium, Hard, or Expert.
• Provide 1 correct answer and 9 plausible distractors.
• Verify and edit pre-written questions for accuracy and clarity.
• Document changes and justify edits for verification tasks.

Skills

Expert physics knowledge

Academic writing

Problem design

Education

PhD or doctoral candidate in Physics

Master's degree in a related field

Job description

Role Overview

We are seeking expert physicists to author and review high-quality academic assessment content for an AI research initiative. You will write and verify rigorous multiple-choice questions across core physics domains, evaluate solution quality, and help establish gold-standard benchmarks used to advance AI capabilities.

You will be assigned one of two task types:

• Question Authoring — Create original, challenging multiple-choice questions in your area of physics expertise, rate their difficulty, and submit them for review.

• Question Verification — Review pre-written questions for accuracy, clarity, and rigor. Edit where needed, rate difficulty, and document any changes made.

Physics Domains Covered

Semiconductor Physics, Nanoelectronics & Spintronics, Photonics, Quantum Optics & Ultrafast, Quantum Sensing & Metrology, Plasma Physics & Fusion Energy, Nonlinear Dynamics & Turbulence, Geophysics & Reservoir Simulation.

Key Responsibilities

• Author original physics questions that test deep conceptual understanding, not surface-level recall

• Ensure questions are unambiguous, self-contained, and precisely defined — all necessary information must be in the problem statement

• Rate each question's difficulty: Medium (intro undergraduate), Hard (advanced undergraduate), or Expert (post-graduate and above)

• Provide 1 correct answer and 9 plausible but subtly incorrect alternatives that challenge expert-level solvers

• Write step-by-step Chain-of-Thought solutions with clear, concise intermediate steps in markdown format

• Supply 1–5 academic references per question from reputable sources (peer-reviewed journals, university repositories)

• For verification tasks: flag issues with clarity, completeness, precision, or solvability and justify any edits made

Ideal Qualifications

• PhD or doctoral candidate in Physics, Applied Physics, Astrophysics, or a closely related field

• Master's degree considered for candidates with exceptional depth in a specific subdomain

• Strong command of graduate-level physics concepts and mathematical formalism

• Experience with rigorous academic problem design or physics olympiad writing is a strong plus

• Excellent written English and ability to express complex ideas clearly and concisely

More About the Opportunity

• Expected commitment: 10+ hours/week

• Asynchronous, fully remote work