Biochemistry & Life Sciences Domain Expert

What you'll do

A leading AI lab wants a working scientist on its team. This is a six-month, full-time W-2 placement in the Bay Area where you sit with the lab's research and program managers and help its models reason properly about life sciences research.

The work falls into four areas:

• Review: vet life sciences tasks and model outputs, catching thin reasoning, mechanistic hand-waving, unsupported causal claims and answers that read well but would not survive peer review
• Golden data: write instruction specs and model-grade solutions, and define new tasks that reflect how research is really done
• Benchmarks: design difficult life sciences evaluation sets and help build domain-specific tools and skills
• Calibration: turn tacit scientific judgment into explicit criteria alongside researchers in adjacent fields

"Mechanistic hand-waving" is a good summary of the failure you are hired to catch: a model that names the right pathway but cannot say what actually binds what, or claims a knockout proves causation when the experiment could not show it.

Who fits

• A PhD in biochemistry, molecular or cell biology, genetics, immunology, neuroscience or a close field
• 4+ years of substantive research at a research university, academic medical center, national lab or industrial research organization (graduate coursework does not count)
• Specialization in at least one area: molecular and cell biology, biochemistry and structural biology, immunology and immuno-oncology, genetics and genomics, neuroscience, or systems biology
• Progression to a senior role (Senior or Staff Scientist, Research Scientist, Instructor, PI or faculty) with ownership of research direction
• Peer-reviewed publications, ideally first-author in strong journals (strongly preferred)
• Hands-on professional use of LLMs and the judgment to spot a confident wrong answer
• 40 hours a week for an initial six months, plus excellent written feedback skills

For postdocs weighing this against another fellowship year, the requirement of a senior title (Staff Scientist, Instructor, PI) is harder to meet than the four years.

Location: not remote

The ad states plainly that this is a hybrid Bay Area role and not remote. You must live there and be on-site with the client team several days a week when required, and relocation is at your own cost with no assistance.

What it pays

$65–105 per hour, Mercor's published band, $5 above the sibling operations role at each end. Employment is through Cincinnatus LLC, which is employer of record and provides W-2 payroll, benefits and compliance. Payment frequency and method are not published on the listing.

Mercor also runs remote contract listings in the same field, such as Molecular Biology Expert (US) at $70–105/hour, if relocating is not an option.

Worth knowing

Good:

• W-2 employment with benefits, not contracting
• Embedded in a frontier lab's research team, working in its tools
• Broad set of recognized specialisms
• Six-month term at full-time hours

Less good:

• Must live in, or move at your own expense to, the Bay Area
• PhD plus senior research title required
• Nothing is published about extension beyond six months
• Wide pay band without stated placement criteria

About this listing

Posted by Mercor as a full-time position in the Bay Area with a US location requirement, confirmed open on 24 September 2026. Employment is with Cincinnatus LLC, separate from Mercor. Pay, qualifications and location terms are the ad's own. See Mercor.