[Hiring] Physical Sciences Expert @Weekday AI

Role Description

We are seeking highly qualified Physical Sciences Experts to develop realistic, terminal-based scientific computing tasks for AI benchmarking and evaluation. The role involves translating authentic workflows from physics, chemistry, materials science, astronomy, and computational science into reproducible, technically rigorous benchmark environments.

• Develop scientific inputs, computational models, executable reference solutions, automated tests, and objective grading criteria.
• Help assess whether AI agents can reason through complex scientific problems, use command-line tools effectively, debug calculations, execute simulations, and generate accurate, reproducible scientific outputs.

Qualifications

• A PhD in Engineering or a relevant physical-science discipline, or postdoctoral experience or equivalent advanced technical experience in a relevant field.
• Strong expertise in at least one core domain, such as physics, chemistry, materials science, astronomy, cosmology, or computational science.
• Proficiency in Python, C/C++, Julia, Bash, or another programming language used for scientific computing.
• Experience with numerical methods, scientific simulations, computational modeling, or quantitative data analysis.
• Familiarity with Linux and terminal-based development environments.
• Ability to independently develop, debug, and validate scientific computational workflows.
• Strong understanding of physical units, numerical precision, scientific constraints, and reproducibility.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and technical communication skills.

Requirements

• Scientific Task Design: Develop challenging, multi-step terminal-based tasks based on authentic physical-science research and computational workflows.
• Environment Development: Build self-contained, reproducible computational environments with appropriate scientific software, dependencies, and configurations.
• Scientific Input Preparation: Create datasets, molecular structures, simulation parameters, experimental data, and model configurations.
• Reference Solution Development: Implement reliable scientific solutions using Python, Bash, C/C++, Julia, or other relevant programming languages and domain-specific tools.
• Automated Testing: Develop tests to validate numerical accuracy, physical consistency, convergence, expected output structures, and task completion.
• Computational Modeling: Design tasks involving simulations, numerical modeling, data fitting, optimization, spectroscopy, molecular analysis, and scientific visualization.
• Scientific Validation: Define appropriate units, numerical tolerances, boundary conditions, physical constraints, and expected scientific behavior.
• Reproducibility: Ensure tasks execute reliably in controlled environments without requiring runtime downloads or undocumented dependencies.
• Debugging and Optimization: Troubleshoot dependency conflicts, numerical precision issues, solver instability, computational performance, and file-format problems.
• Documentation: Clearly communicate scientific assumptions, computational methods, expected outputs, edge cases, and limitations to reviewers.

Benefits

• Contract Duration: 5 weeks
• Compensation: $300 per approved task
• Average Task Completion Time: 6–8 hours
• Work Commitment: 40 hours per week, with at least 4 hours of daily overlap with Pacific Standard Time (PST)
• Contract does not include medical benefits or paid leave.

Selection Process

• Interest Check Form: Complete the initial application and confirm interest in the assignment.
• Mandatory Screening Assessment: Complete the Terminal Bench screening test, lasting approximately 20 minutes.
• Specialized Physical Sciences Assessment: Complete one 40-minute assessment in the relevant subject area.
• Delivery Manager Review: The application and assessment results will be reviewed before the final selection decision.

Important Application Instructions

• Candidates must use the same email address for the Interest Check Form and the agency portal submission.
• Applicants should be ready to begin immediately and meet the full-time availability requirements.