Life, Physical & Social Science Expert

Pay: $60 – $120/hour
Commitment: Part time, ~40 h/week
Field: Life, Physical, and Social Science

The research teams behind the best-known AI models come to Mercor for scientific judgment they can't generate on their own. Your standards and expertise become the rubric that frontier AI is graded against.

This is a standing listing for researchers who want AI training and evaluation work, not a specific job opening. It stays open whether or not a matching project is running this week.

New projects start on short notice, so instead of posting and pulling a listing each time, we keep one open per field and draw from it when one begins.

What the work looks like

We match researchers in the network to projects like:

• Writing a research problem from your own field, with the system, the data, and the assumptions, plus the reference answer a model's attempt gets graded against
• Grading model-written analysis and interpretation: whether the method suits the question, whether the statistics support the claim, whether the conclusion follows from the evidence
• Flagging where a model produces a result that is internally consistent and would not survive peer review, given the design, the sample, or what the measurement can actually show

Projects across these fields have posted at $60 to $120 an hour, set per project by scope and depth.

What we're looking for

• A graduate degree in a life, physical, or social science, with research experience
• Clear written communication, since most of the work involves explaining your reasoning
• Comfort with ambiguous tasks, and willingness to flag unclear instructions

What this covers

This pool spans the sciences, including:

• Biology, biotechnology, chemistry, and materials science
• Physics and astronomy; mathematics
• Earth and environmental science; agriculture
• Psychology; sociology and anthropology
• Economics; political science and policy research

Where you trained matters less than whether you designed the studies and interpreted the data yourself, recently enough to explain the calls you made.

How it works

Apply here with your resume and confirm where you work from, then take a short AI interview, about 20 minutes total.

We verify your background and add you to the science pool.

When a project needs your field, we invite matching people from the pool to that specific listing. It names the rate, the hours, and the client, and any hiring decision is made there.

What to expect

This listing does not accept or reject candidates, so you will not get a decision on it. We reach out when a project matches your background. Depending on what our clients are running, that can be within a week or several months.

Finishing the domain expert interview and joining every network you qualify for both improve your odds of being matched. You only need to sign up once to be eligible across all of them.