What the work actually involves

You write prompts in Russian that a working scientist in your subfield would recognize as real — a synthesis question with a plausible route and a subtle stoichiometric trap, a virology protocol question where the model must distinguish standard containment practice from something it should refuse. Then you read what the model produces and score it on several axes at once: is the chemistry correct, is the answer useful to a legitimate researcher, and did the model handle dual-use content the way the guidelines say it should. A third stream of work is pure classification — applying a written taxonomy to prompts and conversations, consistently, across many items.

The hard part is rarely the science. It is holding a written rubric steady over a long queue, in a second working language, when the model's answer is fluent and confident and 90% right. Reviewers who succeed here are the ones who can point at the specific clause of the guideline that a response violated, rather than describing it as "off."

What the platform screens for

  • Verified doctoral depth. Mercor asks about your dissertation subfield and pushes on it. A named technique, a named instrument, a named failure mode beats a survey of your whole department.
  • Real Russian scientific register. Not conversational fluency — the ability to write terminology, units, and reaction or protocol descriptions the way a Russian-language journal or lab would. Expect at least part of the screen to test this directly.
  • Dual-use judgment. Whether you can articulate why a question is sensitive without either refusing everything technical or waving hazards through.
  • Rubric discipline. Prior grading, peer review, TA marking, or red-teaming experience is a strong signal; so is any account of following someone else's rubric rather than your own instincts.

No AI/ML background is expected and none is tested. The workflow training comes after selection.

Logistics

Fully remote and asynchronous, roughly 7 hours per week, with an immediate start. Eastern Europe or another Russian-speaking base is a stated preference, not a gate — applicants elsewhere are explicitly welcome. Observed pay for this listing sits in the $48–52/hr range; rates on Mercor vary by project and are not guaranteed. Chemistry backgrounds that extend into radiological and nuclear territory — radiochemistry, nuclear chemistry, energetic materials, radiation physics — are counted as in-scope alongside chem and bio.