Researcher and Technical Expert

About the job

Mercor connects elite creative and technical talent with leading AI research labs. Headquartered in San Francisco, our investors include Benchmark , General Catalyst , Peter Thiel , Adam D'Angelo , Larry Summers , and Jack Dorsey .

Position: Researcher and Technical Expert Type: Contract Compensation: $50–$100/hour Commitment: 30+ hours/week

Role Responsibilities

• Design challenging, real-world STEM problems to evaluate model reasoning and problem-solving.
• Implement tasks using Python in an agentic development environment.
• Analyze model/agent behavior to diagnose reasoning gaps and improve performance.
• Develop reproducible and testable deliverables with clear specifications and deterministic tests.
• Collaborate with AI research teams to enhance model outputs and training data quality.
• Work independently and asynchronously to meet deadlines and project goals.

Qualifications

Must-Have

• Deep expertise in data science, machine learning, finance, and/or Python-based coding .
• Active or recently graduated PhD (Top 20 U.S.-based school) .
• Strong research background in frontier STEM topics .
• Ability to engage reliably for 30+ hours/week , primarily on weekdays.
• Demonstrated technical output such as high-quality open-source contributions.
• Comfort reading and reasoning about agent behavior traces to diagnose failure modes.

Preferred

• Familiarity with agentic frameworks and OSS ecosystems like LangChain , MetaGPT , AutoGen , AutoGPT , CrewAI , LlamaIndex , BabyAGI , SuperAGI , CAMEL , AgentGPT , Dify .

Application Process (Takes 20–30 mins to complete)

• Upload resume
• AI interview based on your resume
• Submit form

Resources & Support

For details about the interview process and platform information, please check: https://talent.docs.mercor.com/welcome/welcome

For any help or support, reach out to: support@mercor.com

PS: Our team reviews applications daily. Please complete your AI interview and application steps to be considered for this opportunity.