Quantum Chemistry AI Benchmark Designer (PhD)

Mercor; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 83,000 - 124,000; Part time

Job summary

Mercor is hiring PhD and Master's scientists to author AI evaluation tasks (Sci Code) for a new benchmark in scientific computing. You will author original, executable research problems that frontier models cannot solve.

The engagement is 6 weeks long, part-time with 20+ hours per week, starting immediately. You will source materials, write prompt-based tasks, and calibrate grading criteria to challenge models.

Qualifications

• PhD in chemistry, physical chemistry, theoretical chemistry, computational chemistry, or a closely related field.
• Demonstrated depth in both quantum chemistry and computational chemistry.
• Working proficiency in Python, R, or another relevant programming language for scientific computing.
• Comfortable with Git/GitHub and running code in Docker— authoring runs through a pull-request workflow with automated quality checks.

Responsibilities

• Source your own material: a published paper, a Kaggle dataset, an open-source repository, or a scenario you design
• Write scientific prompts based on the input
• Build the grading criteria that define a correct answer
• Calibrate against frontier models — a task ships only when strong models fail it more often than they succeed

Skills

Quantum chemistry

Computational chemistry

Python

R

Education

PhD in chemistry or related field

Tools

Git/GitHub

Docker

Job description

Mercor is hiring PhD and Master's scientists to author AI evaluation tasks (Sci Code) for a new benchmark in scientific computing. You will author original, executable research problems that frontier models cannot solve.

The engagement is 6 weeks long, part-time with 20+ hours per week, starting immediately. You will source materials, write prompt-based tasks, and calibrate grading criteria to challenge models.