Posted over 30 days ago. Roles like this often stay open for a while, so it's still worth applying.
STEM Coding Expert (Physics/Math/Bio) at Mercor
posted 7 months agoSTEM Coding Expert | $70/hr | Worldwide Remote
Mercor is partnering with a leading AI research organization to build a next-generation scientific coding benchmark. We're looking for advanced STEM domain experts to craft rigorous, research-derived computational challenges that evaluate frontier AI models on complex scientific reasoning tasks.
Key Responsibilities
- Author research-level scientific coding prompts derived from recent peer-reviewed work (post–July 2025)
- Decompose each problem into 3–5 sequential subproblems that reflect realistic scientific reasoning workflows
- Develop clean, well-documented, fully executable Python reference solutions with deterministic outputs
- Calibrate problem difficulty by evaluating model outputs against canonical solutions and iterating as needed
- Design comprehensive unit test suites ensuring 100% pass rates on reference solutions
- Tag problems with structured metadata including domain, subdomain, difficulty rating, and reviewer notes
- Participate in peer review to validate correctness, ambiguity resistance, and robustness against shortcut solutions
- Document structured multi-step solution trajectories demonstrating tool use and debugging behavior
Ideal Qualifications
- Advanced expertise in Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology, or a closely related technical field
- Strong ability to translate recent research into implementable computational challenges
- High proficiency in Python for scientific computing — simulations, numerical methods, data pipelines, symbolic computation
- Experience designing reproducible evaluation harnesses and robust unit tests
- Familiarity with dependency management and sandbox-safe execution environments
- Exceptional attention to detail with the ability to create unambiguous, deterministic problem specifications
- Ability to anticipate and mitigate shortcut solutions or memorization risks in AI evaluation contexts
This is a project-based contractor opportunity focused on producing high-difficulty, high-integrity evaluation data for cutting-edge AI systems.
How to apply for this role
- Upload your resume — keep it up-to-date and in English. Mercor will auto-fill your profile from it.
- Complete the AI interview — a 15-minute conversation about your experience. Be ready to discuss specific projects and challenges you've solved.
- Submit your application — only about 20% of applicants finish all the steps, so completing yours puts you well ahead.