Senior Structural Biologist at Mercor

Senior Structural Biologist / Protein Design Expert | $150–220/hr | Worldwide Remote

We are partnering with a leading AI lab to evaluate how a frontier model performs on long-horizon protein-design problems. This is a focused, hands-on engagement with senior protein-design experts to author, scope, and evaluate challenging design problems — and to collaborate closely with our team to define what excellence looks like in AI-assisted protein design.

What You'll Do

• Brainstorm 2–3 candidate protein-design problem ideas (rough descriptions, ~1 page each)
• Iterate with our team to align on a well-scoped task structure
• Write up the chosen problem in detail: target/inputs, allowed tools and information sources, success criteria, and evaluation methodology for the model's design decisions and reasoning
• Review model trajectories (typically 5–20 per problem) and grade design choices and reasoning quality at each step

Who We're Looking For

• A working protein-design expert — binder design, FEP/ddG, enzyme engineering, structure-guided medicinal chemistry, or related disciplines
• PhD or equivalent industry track record; adjacent expertise in Materials Science, Biophysics, Computational Chemistry, or Computer Science is welcome
• Ability to pose long-horizon design problems where the optimal answer is unknown, yet you can confidently judge whether a given trajectory is scientifically sound
• Comfortable evaluating reasoning quality — not just final outputs — including scenarios with full internet/tool access or constrained toolsets
• Able to iterate quickly with multi-day turnaround on drafts over a ~2-week period

Time Commitment

Approximately 15–30 hours over 2–4 weeks (problem authoring, iteration, and trajectory grading), with potential for expansion beyond the initial engagement.

Compensation

$150–$220/hr, commensurate with expertise. We are specifically seeking experts who have shipped molecules, contributed to widely-used tooling, and/or made a meaningful impact on the field.