Research Contractor

FutureSearch; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 103,000 - 172,000; Part time

Job summary

FutureSearch is seeking an exceptional research contractor to support the development of tasks for training and benchmarking frontier models.

The role is fully remote with flexible hours. You will work about 20 hours per week on a one-month contract, with the potential to extend and/or convert to a full-time position based on performance, impact, and fit with our frontier research agenda.

Qualifications

• Experience in research contracting is a plus.
• Availability to commit ~15–20 hours/week.
• Contract length is one month with potential extension or conversion.

Responsibilities

• Develop tasks for training and benchmarking frontier models.
• Conduct careful information retrieval and cross-checking across sources.
• Clearly communicate reasoning and uncertainties in findings.

Skills

Research skills

Web research tools

Communication

Tools

LLM research tools

Job description

FutureSearch is looking for an exceptional research contractor to support the development of tasks for training and benchmarking frontier models.

NOTE: We are looking for someone who can start no later than Monday, August 3rd and has availability to work a minimum of 15 hours/week. This is a one month contract with the opportunity to extend and/or convert to a full-time position.

We are an elite team of engineers and researchers at the frontier of AI epistemics. We have the best publicly available forecaster, with a public track record in forecasting tournaments at evals.futuresearch.ai and markets.futuresearch.ai. We publish papers, such as our ICLR Workshop paper in Jan 2026, and benchmarks like Deep Research Bench and Bench to the Future. We use our frontier research tools to research the future, such as co-authoring the AI 2027 Timelines Forecast. We work with frontier labs on research, evaluation, and training.

You are a very careful researcher. You can patiently get to the bottom of a subtle information retrieval task, such as finding claims in an academic paper, cross-referencing financial documents, or tracking down the original source of a claim.

You have strong familiarity with using web research LLM tools (such as chatbots with their research tooling enabled), are familiar with their strengths and weaknesses, and update your views as the tooling changes. You know how to leverage these tools to rapidly get up to speed on a new domain, while remaining calibrated on what you don’t know or are uncertain about.

You are a strong communicator, and can quickly, concisely, and accurately explain your reasoning and uncertainties. You work well in both synchronous environments (verbally explaining your thought process) an asynchronous environment (quickly and concisely communicating in writing).

FutureSearch is fully remote. We have flexible hours, and operate in a high trust environment. The hourly rate for this role varies from $75 to $125/hour based primarily on location. You should expect to work an average of 20 hours/week for the duration of the contract. Week-to-week work will be dynamic, but expectations for hours will be communicated before-hand.

This is a 1 month contract with the opportunity to extend and/or convert to a full-time position.