What the work actually is

You spend your days deciding what "correct" looks like for life sciences problems, then making that decision explicit enough that other reviewers and a model can be held to it. Concretely: reviewing life sciences knowledge-work tasks and model outputs for thin mechanism, unsupported causal inference, and answers that are fluent but would not survive review; writing instruction specs that pin down scope, assumptions, and acceptable evidence; producing golden solutions yourself; and designing evaluation sets that discriminate between a model that reasons and one that pattern-matches on abstracts. Calibration work with client researchers and adjacent-field specialists is a standing part of the job, not an onboarding phase — much of the value is converting tacit judgment ("no immunologist would accept that control") into criteria a stranger can apply.

What the screen is looking for

A practicing specialist, not a broad-spectrum science generalist. The screen probes depth in one named area — molecular and cell biology, biochemistry and structural biology, immunology and immuno-oncology, genetics and genomics, neuroscience, or systems biology — and it probes it with follow-ups, so claims of expertise need a specific paper, assay, or dataset behind them. It also looks for evidence of research ownership at a senior level (Senior/Staff/Research Scientist, Instructor, PI, faculty), a peer-reviewed publication record with first-author work strongly preferred, and genuine hands-on LLM use in your own professional workflow, including a clear sense of where models fail on your material.

Logistics, stated plainly

  • Hybrid, Bay Area, California. Multiple on-site days per week when required. If you don't live there, you must relocate at your own cost before the engagement starts; no relocation assistance.
  • Full-time, 40 hours per week, initial engagement of six months.
  • W-2 employment with Cincinnatus LLC, which is the employer of record and administers payroll and benefits. Cincinnatus is a separate legal entity from Mercor, which is where the opportunity is discovered.
  • You work inside the client's tools on client-issued accounts and equipment, alongside their research teams.

Pay bands here are observed rather than promised; the actual offer depends on specialization, seniority, and the client's own leveling.