AI/ML Research Scientist PhD STEM 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.