Company Intelligence
Mercor
Elite expert network for frontier AI training
Hiring difficulty: Hard
Company 1 of 22
Mercor recruits highly-credentialed experts (PhDs, senior engineers, licensed professionals) to produce domain-specific data, evaluations, and reasoning traces for frontier model labs. Work is asynchronous, project-based, and bar-raising.
What they hire for
- Domain experts (STEM, law, medicine, finance)
- Senior software engineers for code evals
- Reasoning & math contributors
- Subject-matter reviewers and graders
Skills they value
- Verifiable domain credentials
- Technical writing and structured reasoning
- Rubric-based evaluation
- Clear citations and sourcing
Common rejection reasons
- Credentials not verifiable on LinkedIn or public record
- Generic resume with no deep specialization
- Failed calibration / sample task
- Inconsistent quality across screening prompts
Resume optimization tips
- Lead with degree, institution, and publication count
- Quantify domain experience in years and outputs
- List concrete tools (LaTeX, Jupyter, peer-review platforms)
- Add a single-line specialization headline
Interview preparation
- Expect a paid calibration task before any call
- Demonstrate structured chain-of-thought in writing
- Cite primary sources, not summaries
Typical project types
- Reasoning trace authoring
- Model output grading with rubrics
- Adversarial prompt design
- Domain Q&A pair creation
Estimated pay ranges
- $40–$150/hr depending on specialization and seniority
Application strategy
- Apply with a domain-specific resume, not a generalist one
- Link to publications, GitHub, or portfolio
- Treat the sample task as the real interview
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