[Hiring] Pharmaceutical Research PhD - Expert @Mercor

Role Description

Mercor connects elite creative and technical talent with leading AI research labs. Headquartered in San Francisco, our investors include Benchmark, General Catalyst, Peter Thiel, Adam D'Angelo, Larry Summers, and Jack Dorsey.

Position: Pharmaceutical Research Expert

Type: Contract

Compensation: $1,150–$1,450 per completed task

Location: Remote

Role Responsibilities

• Build a realistic digital workspace centered on the Drive folders you use daily, including:
  • Study protocols
  • Investigator brochures
  • IND/NDA drafts
  • Pharmacology reports
  • Biomarker analyses
  • CMC technical reports
  • DMC briefing documents
  • Email threads
• Represent platforms like Medidata Rave, Oracle Clinical One, Schrödinger Suite, Benchling, and LabArchives.
• Design multi-step tasks grounded in your real workflows, requiring navigation of multiple apps, files, and stakeholders to challenge frontier AI agents meaningfully.
• Collaborate with other pharmaceutical-research experts to design the environment, shape task scope, and review scenarios for realism and rigor.
• Work asynchronously with research teams to refine task designs and evaluation criteria for pharma-research agent benchmarks.
• Contribute to frontier AI research and benchmarking, directly informing how leading labs train and evaluate the next generation of AI systems.

Qualifications

• Must-Have:
  • PhD, MD, PharmD, or MS with deep experience; industry fellowship training a plus.
  • 3+ years of full-time experience at a Fortune 500 pharma/biotech or top academic research center.
  • Background in one or more areas such as:
    • Target ID/drug discovery
    • Preclinical/translational research
    • Clinical development
    • Regulatory affairs
    • Real-world evidence
  • Day-to-day use of Medidata Rave, Oracle Clinical One, Schrödinger Suite, MOE (CCG), and Benchling/LabArchives.
  • Strong analytical thinking and writing; able to translate pharma R&D workflows into structured task specs.

Requirements

• Task Completion Pay: Competitive and based on task quality (~$1,150–$1,450 per completed task, subject to change as the project evolves).
• Performance Bonus: Top performers receive a weekly bonus incentive on top of their per task rate.
• Hourly Opportunity: Top performers may transition to an hourly compensation model based on sustained quality and throughput.

Application Process

• Upload resume
• AI interview based on your resume
• Submit form

Resources & Support

• For details about the interview process and platform information, please check: Interview Process
• For any help or support, reach out to: [email protected]
• Our team reviews applications daily. Please complete your AI interview and application steps to be considered for this opportunity.