Remote Physics AI Research Scientist (PhD)

Mercor; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; GBP 63,000 - 83,000; Part time

Job summary

Mercor is seeking Physics PhD Coding Experts for a remote, six-week contract. Compensation is $70 per hour, with a commitment of 20+ hours per week and flexible scheduling.

You will source material from published papers, Kaggle datasets, and open-source repositories, then write scientific prompts, build grading criteria, and calibrate tasks against frontier models.

The role requires independent work, strong coding skills in Python or R, and comfort with GitHub and Docker. Immediate start.

Qualifications

• PhD in physics, applied physics, or a closely related field.
• Depth in at least two subdomains: condensed matter, optics, quantum information/computing, computational physics, astrophysics, particle physics.
• Working proficiency in Python or R for scientific computing.
• Comfortable with Git/GitHub and running code in Docker.

Responsibilities

• Source material from published papers, Kaggle datasets, open-source repositories, or self-designed scenarios.
• Write scientific prompts based on sourced inputs.
• Build grading criteria to define correct answers.
• Calibrate tasks against frontier models, ensuring tasks ship only when strong models fail more often than they succeed.
• Work independently and asynchronously to meet deadlines while improving AI model performance.

Skills

Python

R

Education

PhD in physics

Tools

Git/GitHub

Docker

Job description

Mercor is seeking Physics PhD Coding Experts for a remote, six-week contract. Compensation is $70 per hour, with a commitment of 20+ hours per week and flexible scheduling.

You will source material from published papers, Kaggle datasets, and open-source repositories, then write scientific prompts, build grading criteria, and calibrate tasks against frontier models.

The role requires independent work, strong coding skills in Python or R, and comfort with GitHub and Docker. Immediate start.