Biology PhD - Scientific Coder

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.

About the role

We are seeking Biology PhD Coding Experts for a 6-week remote contract role with a commitment of 20+ hours per week. Compensation is $70/hour.

Responsibilities

• Source material from published papers, Kaggle datasets, or open-source repositories to create research problems.
• Write scientific prompts and develop grading criteria for correct answers.
• Calibrate tasks against frontier models, ensuring strong models fail more often than they succeed.
• Utilize Python, R, or other programming languages for scientific computing.
• Work with Git/GitHub and Docker for code execution and quality checks.
• Collaborate asynchronously and independently to meet deadlines and improve AI model performance.

Requirements

• PhD in biology, biological sciences, biochemistry, genetics, ecology, or a closely related field.
• Depth in at least two subdomains: ecology, biochemistry, genetics.
• Proficiency in Python, R, or another relevant programming language.
• Comfortable with Git/GitHub and Docker.

Qualifications

• Preferred: Publications in peer-reviewed journals.
• Preferred: Prior scientific software or research engineering experience.

Start date: Immediate.