What the work actually looks like
You sit inside the client's tooling, using client-issued accounts and equipment, and your output is written artifacts rather than lab work. A typical week mixes three things: reviewing pharmaceutical knowledge-work tasks and model responses for thin reasoning or claims that would not survive a regulatory reviewer; authoring instruction specs and golden solutions that pin down what a correct answer to a discovery or development problem looks like; and designing benchmark tasks hard enough that a strong model still fails them. Calibration sessions with lab researchers and experts in adjacent domains are a recurring part of the job — much of the value is in converting judgment you normally apply implicitly into criteria someone else can grade against.
What the screen is looking for
Mercor's screen is trying to distinguish a practicing drug development specialist from a well-read generalist. Expect probing on one pipeline stage in depth — target validation, lead optimization, preclinical tox, translational biomarkers, clinical development, or regulatory/CMC — with follow-ups that go a layer past textbook answers into decisions you personally owned. Seniority is checked concretely: which program, what was your call, what happened. AI fluency is checked the same way: not whether you have used an LLM, but whether you can describe a specific instance where a model produced a fluent, confidently wrong pharmaceutical answer and what the tell was.
Logistics to be clear about
- Not remote. Hybrid, Bay Area, on-site with the client's team multiple days a week when required. If you are not already local, relocation is at your own cost with no assistance.
- 40 hours a week, initial engagement of six months.
- W-2 through Cincinnatus LLC, which acts as employer of record and handles payroll and benefits. Mercor is the discovery platform, not the employer.
- Pay of $75–115/hr reflects observed bands for senior science expert roles on the platform and is not a guarantee for any individual offer.