Analytical Chemist

What you'll do

Mercor is recruiting analytical chemists onto a red-team panel that checks whether frontier AI models handle chemistry questions correctly: full answers for legitimate professional questions, refusals for genuinely dangerous ones. Refusing a routine method-validation question counts as a failure, just as answering a harmful one does.

Each task:

1. Write a single-turn prompt in your area, labelled benign, dual-use or adversarial
2. Assess the model's response against a defined policy standard
3. Write the reference answer and the technical reasoning behind it

Analytical chemistry is a subtle dual-use case. Detection limits, screening coverage and library matching are everyday professional knowledge, and the same facts tell someone what a screen can and cannot see. Knowing which questions are routine is the expertise being hired.

Who fits

Analysts who have built and validated methods for hazardous compounds and understand what a detection limit really implies. The ad names:

• Detection and identification of hazardous compounds by GC-MS, LC-MS/MS, IR or NMR
• Method development and validation for trace-level analysis
• Environmental, occupational or emergency-response sampling and analysis
• Reference standards, spectral libraries and unknown identification
• Lab accreditation, QA/QC and proficiency testing

Red-teaming experience is preferred. The role is writing-intensive: each judgment needs a rationale a non-specialist can follow. Include a sample or link, such as a published method, a validation report summary or a paper.

What it pays

$65–75 per task, Mercor's published figure. There is no stated task duration, so the effective hourly rate depends on your pace through the three steps. Track your first few tasks.

The listing does not include Mercor's usual payment-terms section, so payment schedule and visa eligibility are unstated. Confirm them at onboarding.

Before you apply

You must not use classified or export-controlled information, or anything under NDA or prepublication review. Applicants with those obligations can still apply by flagging them, and the work will be scoped accordingly.

Expect long periods reading and writing about misuse scenarios. Mercor briefs experts first and allows you to pause or step away without penalty.

Worth knowing

Good:

• Rewards deep instrument and validation know-how
• Welfare provisions are stated plainly
• No country restriction published

Less good:

• Per-task pay, task length unknown
• Payment schedule and eligibility not on the listing
• Sustained engagement with misuse scenarios

About this listing

Posted by Mercor as a remote contract, confirmed open on 24 September 2026. The same panel is recruiting Forensic / Toxicological Chemists, Industrial Hygienists / Process Safety Engineers and Synthetic / Process Chemists. See Mercor.