Biology PhD - AI Model Evaluation at Mercor

Biology PhD - AI Model Evaluation | $73.29/hr | Worldwide Remote

Join Mercor in shaping the future of life sciences AI by evaluating and improving how conversational AI systems understand and explain complex biological concepts. This role combines your deep scientific expertise with cutting-edge AI development to ensure accuracy and reliability in biology-related AI responses.

Why This Role Exists

Mercor partners with leading AI teams to enhance general-purpose conversational AI systems used across everyday and professional scenarios. Life sciences AI must accurately reflect complex biological systems, experimental reasoning, and evolving scientific understanding. You'll focus on improving how models reason about and explain biological concepts across molecular, organismal, and systems-level topics.

What You'll Do

• Write and refine prompts to guide model behavior in life sciences contexts
• Evaluate LLM-generated responses to biology-related queries for scientific accuracy and reasoning quality
• Conduct fact-checking using authoritative public sources and domain knowledge
• Annotate model responses by identifying strengths, areas of improvement, and factual or conceptual inaccuracies
• Assess clarity, structure, and appropriateness of explanations for different audiences
• Ensure model responses align with expected conversational behavior and system guidelines
• Apply consistent evaluation standards by following clear taxonomies, benchmarks, and detailed evaluation guidelines

Who You Are

• Hold a PhD in Biology or a closely related life sciences field
• Have deep expertise in one or more sub-domains: Molecular & Cellular Biology, Organismal Physiology & Development, Microbiology, Immunology & Pathobiology, or Ecology, Evolution & Environmental Biology
• Have significant experience using large language models (LLMs) and understand how and why people use them
• Possess excellent writing skills and can clearly explain complex life sciences concepts
• Demonstrate strong attention to detail and consistently notice subtle issues others may overlook
• Have experience reviewing or editing technical or academic writing

Nice-to-Have Specialties

• Prior experience with RLHF, model evaluation, or data annotation work
• Experience teaching, mentoring, or explaining life sciences concepts to non-expert audiences
• Familiarity with evaluation rubrics, benchmarks, or structured review frameworks

What Success Looks Like

• You identify inaccuracies or weak mechanistic explanations for life science-related queries
• Your feedback improves the rigor, clarity, and correctness of AI explanations
• You deliver consistent, reproducible evaluation artifacts that strengthen model performance
• Mercor customers trust their AI systems in life sciences and biology contexts because you've rigorously evaluated them

Why Join Mercor

This role allows life sciences PhDs to apply their expertise to the development of high-quality AI systems, influencing how biology is explained and understood at scale.

Fluent English language skills required.