Public Health Expert | $45–65/hr | Worldwide Remote
Mercor is partnering with leading AI labs on Project Atlas — an initiative to build realistic enterprise environments where frontier AI agents are trained and evaluated. We're seeking experienced public health professionals to recreate the digital workspaces they use daily and design tasks that genuinely challenge state-of-the-art AI systems.
About the Role
You'll bring your expertise in epidemiology, health policy, program management, or population health to build a high-fidelity digital environment that mirrors the tools, files, and cross-functional workflows of a major public health organization — then author tasks grounded in the programs you actually run today.
Key Responsibilities
- Build a realistic digital workspace centered on day-to-day Drive folders — including surveillance summaries, grant applications, program evaluations, health assessment reports, policy briefs, outbreak write-ups, and email threads — with representation of supporting platforms (e.g., Esri ArcGIS, SAS, MATLAB, Socrata)
- Design multi-step tasks grounded in real workflows that require navigating multiple apps, files, and stakeholders in ways that meaningfully challenge frontier AI agents
- Collaborate with other public health experts to design environments, shape task scope, and review scenarios for realism and rigor
- Work asynchronously with research teams to refine task designs and evaluation criteria for public health agent benchmarks
- Contribute directly to frontier AI research — your work informs how leading labs train and evaluate the next generation of AI systems
Ideal Qualifications
- 3+ years of full-time experience at a federal health agency (CDC, NIH, HHS), large state/county health department, major academic school of public health, or F500 population-health organization
- Background in one or more of the following areas:
- Epidemiology, surveillance, or outbreak investigation
- Health policy, health-services research, or program evaluation
- Population/community health program management
- Grants administration, cooperative agreements, or federal reporting
- Environmental or occupational health
- MPH, PhD, or DrPH a plus; biostatistics or GIS fluency preferred
- Day-to-day experience with Esri ArcGIS, Google Maps Platform, SAS, MATLAB, or Socrata/ArcGIS Hub
- Strong analytical thinking and writing skills — able to translate public health workflows into structured task specifications
Compensation
This project begins at an effective hourly rate of $45–$65/hr, with a planned transition to a throughput-based model compensating experts for the quality and volume of work produced.
About Mercor
Mercor is a talent marketplace connecting top experts with leading AI labs and research organizations. Backed by Benchmark, General Catalyst, Adam D'Angelo, and Jack Dorsey, Mercor supports thousands of professionals shaping the next generation of AI systems.
