What the work actually is

You spend your days reading accounting and audit work produced by people and by models, and deciding whether it would survive review. That means catching misapplied standards, conclusions that skip the analysis, revenue or lease treatments asserted without support, and answers that are fluent and well-formatted but wrong. The other half of the job is generative: writing instruction specs that define what a correct response looks like, producing golden solutions with the reasoning shown, and designing benchmark tasks hard enough that a strong model still fails them. You will also sit in calibration discussions with researchers and experts from adjacent domains, turning tacit partner-level judgment into criteria someone else can apply consistently.

What the screen is looking for

Mercor's screening is conversational and follow-up heavy, and it pushes on depth rather than breadth. Expect to be asked which standard you actually live in — ASC 606, ASC 842, SOX 404 controls testing, forensic engagements — and then to be pressed for the specific judgment calls, materiality thresholds, and documentation you owned. Generalist answers stall quickly; the listing says outright that they want a practicing specialist. You should also be ready to describe hands-on LLM use in real professional work and to say plainly where models mislead you, because the ability to distinguish a well-reasoned answer from a plausible-sounding wrong one is a stated qualification, not a nice-to-have.

Logistics, stated plainly

  • Not remote. Hybrid, Bay Area based, on-site with the client team multiple days per week when required.
  • Relocation is at your own cost. No assistance is provided, and you must be in the Bay Area before the engagement starts.
  • Full-time: 40 hours per week, initial engagement of six months.
  • Employer of record is Cincinnatus LLC, not Mercor and not the AI lab — W-2 payroll, benefits, and compliance run through Cincinnatus, while you work inside client-issued tools and accounts.

The $60–100/hr band reflects rates observed on comparable Mercor-sourced expert placements; actual offers depend on credential, specialization, and seniority, and nothing here is a guarantee.