Mercor is recruiting chemistry and biology PhDs who write and read Croatian at a native level to probe how frontier AI models handle sensitive technical material in Croatian. The work is prompt writing, response annotation, and guideline-based classification across chemical, biological, and radiological/nuclear topics, at roughly 7 hours a week.

Summary, eligibility guidance and screening preparation are prepared by Sidequest from the platform's posting. Check the source listing before applying.

What the work actually involves

You write expert-level prompts in Croatian on topics inside your own scientific specialty, then evaluate what the model returns. That evaluation is multi-dimensional: is the chemistry or biology actually correct, is the response useful to a competent professional asking in good faith, and does it handle dual-use content appropriately rather than either over-refusing benign questions or supplying operationally useful detail on harm. A third strand is classification — applying a written taxonomy to sort prompts and conversations into categories, consistently, across many items.

The Croatian element is not incidental. Safety behaviour that holds in English often degrades in lower-resource languages, and part of what this project measures is whether a model's refusals, hedges, and technical accuracy survive translation into Croatian scientific register. That means your Croatian needs to include real domain vocabulary — the terms you would use in a Zagreb lab or in a Croatian-language thesis — not English concepts loosely rendered.

What the screen looks for

Mercor's screening is AI-led and follow-up heavy. Expect it to verify the PhD (field, institution, stage, thesis topic), press for genuine subfield depth rather than survey-level breadth, and test your judgment on dual-use boundaries with concrete scenarios. Claims of Croatian fluency will be probed against technical vocabulary; a generic "I'm a native speaker" answer without domain terms tends to underperform. No AI or ML background is expected or asked about — the platform trains the workflow — so do not oversell tangential ML exposure at the cost of scientific specificity.

Logistics

Fully remote and asynchronous; no fixed shifts stated.
Part-time, approximately 7 hours per week, with an immediate start.
Observed band is $48–52/hr — as reported for this listing, not a guarantee; Mercor rates vary by assessment outcome and project.
Based in Croatia or the wider region is a stated preference only; applicants elsewhere are explicitly welcome.

Bilingual Croatian STEM Expert (PhD) — AI Safety

What the work actually involves

What the screen looks for

Logistics

Interview prep — 10 questions