Data Science PhD - AI Expert

About the position

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: $70–$120/hour Commitment: 30+ hours/week Role Responsibilities Design challenging, real-world STEM problems to evaluate model reasoning and problem-solving. Implement tasks in an agentic development environment using Python . Analyze model/agent behavior to diagnose reasoning and problem-solving gaps. Develop robust, real-world tasks with executable tests for model evaluation. Work independently and asynchronously to meet deadlines and improve AI model performance . Qualifications Must-Have Deep expertise in data science, machine learning, finance, and/or Python-based coding . Active or recently graduated PhD (Top 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. 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.