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Finance Domain Expert — AI Training & Evaluation

$60–100/hrrate as listed

A senior finance practitioner works alongside a frontier AI lab's research team to write instruction specs, produce golden solutions, and QA finance knowledge-work tasks. It is a full-time W-2 role through Cincinnatus LLC, remote day-to-day but requiring Bay Area residency and occasional on-site days.

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

The work

You are the substance behind what "correct" means in financial reasoning tasks. Day to day, that splits roughly three ways: reviewing finance tasks and model outputs for thin reasoning, unstated assumptions, and answers that read fluently but would not survive a partner or investment-committee review; authoring instruction specs and golden solutions that define the target behavior precisely; and designing benchmark tasks that reveal whether the model is genuinely improving rather than pattern-matching. A recurring theme is calibration — sitting with lab researchers and experts in adjacent domains to convert tacit professional judgment into explicit, teachable criteria that a reviewer other than you can apply consistently.

Expect to work inside the client's own tooling with client-issued accounts and equipment, embedded with their research teams rather than working from an external queue.

What the screening looks for

Verifiable depth in one discipline — corporate finance and FP&A, IB/M&A, asset or wealth management, PE or private credit, quantitative finance and risk, treasury, or accounting and audit. Generalist exposure to finance is explicitly out of scope.
Seniority with ownership — VP, Director, Principal, MD, Portfolio Manager, Controller, or CFO-level progression at a recognized institution, with at least five years of dedicated finance work.
Credentials — an advanced degree (MBA, MS, PhD in finance, economics, accounting, or a quantitative field) and/or CFA, CPA, FRM, or an actuarial designation are strongly preferred.
AI fluency and error-spotting — hands-on professional LLM use, plus demonstrated ability to distinguish a well-reasoned answer from a confidently wrong one.
Written precision — screens weigh how clearly you can specify a rubric or critique in writing.

Logistics and pay

Full-time, 40 hours per week, on an initial six-month engagement. Remote for daily work, but Bay Area residency is a hard requirement and infrequent on-site days should be expected. Employment, payroll, and benefits are administered by Cincinnatus LLC as employer of record; the role is discovered through Mercor but is not a freelance or per-task arrangement. Observed rates for finance expert work at this level sit in the $50–90/hr range — treated as observed, not guaranteed, and dependent on discipline, seniority, and the client's own banding.

What they look for

5+ years dedicated finance experience at a recognized institution (IB, asset manager, PE/credit, Big Four, large corporate finance, or regulator)
Deep specialization in a core finance discipline (FP&A, M&A, PE/private credit, quant risk, treasury, or accounting/audit)
Senior IC or leadership track record — VP, Director, Principal, MD, PM, Controller, or CFO level
Advanced degree (MBA, MS, PhD) and/or CFA, CPA, FRM, or actuarial designation
Hands-on professional use of LLMs with judgment to detect plausible-sounding errors
Precise technical writing for specs, rubrics, and structured feedback

Before you apply

Would you pass this screen?

Drawn from what this listing actually requires. Answered in your browser — nothing is sent to us, and we do not store your answers.

Do you have 5 or more years of substantive, dedicated professional finance experience at a recognized institution — such as an investment bank, asset manager, private equity or credit fund, Big Four firm, large corporate finance function, or financial regulator?
Finance professional experience · required
Do you have genuine specialization in at least one core finance discipline — such as corporate finance and FP&A, investment banking and M&A, asset or wealth management, private equity or private credit, quantitative finance and risk management, treasury, or accounting and audit?
Specialized domain expertise · required
Have you progressed to a senior individual-contributor or leadership level — for example Vice President, Director, Principal, Managing Director, Portfolio Manager, Controller, or CFO — with real ownership of financial analysis and decisions?
Senior-level role or progression · required
Do you currently live in the Bay Area, California and are you able to come on-site when required?
Bay Area residency · required
Do you hold an advanced degree from a strong program (MBA, MS, or PhD in finance, economics, accounting, or a quantitative field) and/or a recognized professional credential such as CFA, CPA, FRM, or an actuarial designation?
Advanced degree or professional credential · preferred
Have you used large language models in your professional work and developed judgment about their strengths and failure modes in financial contexts?
Hands-on LLM experience · preferred

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Included with this listing

Interview prep — 10 questions

Matched to what this platform's screening actually measures. Answer each out loud in 60–90 seconds: claim → concrete example → implication.

What it tests: Whether the candidate has genuine senior-level ownership of financial reasoning, not just execution of others' frameworks. Whether they can articulate the tacit judgment — competitive context, data quality issues, assumption trade-offs — that separates a sound answer from a plausible-sounding wrong one.
A strong answer: The candidate names a concrete deal, analysis, or strategic decision they personally drove (not assisted with), explains the financial substance and the non-obvious judgment calls they made, and describes how the outcome validated or challenged their reasoning.
Where people lose it: Describing work they executed for someone else's decision, or summarizing a transaction at the surface level without touching the judgment that made it right — 'we valued the company at 8x EBITDA' tells you nothing about whether they understand valuation.