Materials Science PhD - AI Evaluator

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 Material Science PhD Coding Experts for a 6-week remote contract role. The position requires a commitment of 20+ hours per week at a rate of $70/hour.

Responsibilities

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

Requirements

• PhD in materials science, materials engineering, applied physics, chemistry, chemical engineering, or a closely related field.
• Demonstrated depth in semiconductor materials and molecular modeling.
• Working proficiency in Python, R, or another relevant programming language for scientific computing.
• Comfortable with Git/GitHub and running code in Docker.

Qualifications

Preferred:

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

Start date: Immediate