Finance Domain Expert: AI Training & Evaluation

What you'll do

This is the broad finance seat in the Bay Area program that also includes the Insurance Domain Expert and Accounting & Audit Domain Expert. You join a leading AI lab's research and program management teams full-time for six months, on client equipment and in the client's own tools, and help decide what "correct" financial work looks like for its models.

The four strands of work:

• Data QA and review: vet finance tasks and model outputs for missing steps, thin reasoning, flawed assumptions, and answers that would not survive a senior reviewer
• Instruction specs and golden datasets: write specs, produce golden solutions to finance problems, and define new tasks that reflect real practice
• Benchmarks: design hard finance evaluation sets and help build finance-specific skills and tools with the researchers
• Calibration: translate tacit financial judgment into explicit criteria alongside researchers and adjacent specialists

The ad is open to any core discipline: corporate finance and FP&A, IB and M&A, asset or wealth management, PE or private credit, quant finance and risk, treasury, or accounting and audit. That breadth is the distinguishing feature of this listing, and also its catch; see pay below.

Who qualifies

• 5+ years of dedicated finance experience at a recognised institution (investment bank, asset manager, PE or credit fund, Big Four, large corporate finance function, or regulator). Roles that touch finance only peripherally do not count
• Genuine specialisation in at least one core discipline
• Progression to VP, Director, Principal, MD, Portfolio Manager, Controller or CFO level, with ownership of analysis and decisions
• An MBA, MS or PhD from a strong program and/or a CFA, CPA, FRM or actuarial designation, strongly preferred
• Hands-on LLM use in your professional work
• 40 hours a week for an initial 6 months
• Living in the Bay Area, or relocating there at your own cost

What it pays

$60–100 per hour. That is notably lower than two sibling listings built on identical text: the Investment Banking & M&A version pays $100–150 and the Private Equity & Venture Capital version $110–150. If your background is squarely in either of those, apply there instead; this generalist listing is the better route for FP&A, treasury, risk, asset management and accounting profiles.

Employment terms

Full-time W-2 employment with Cincinnatus LLC, a staffing company separate from Mercor that handles payroll, benefits and compliance. Pay frequency and visa terms are not published on the listing.

Worth knowing

Good:

• W-2 with benefits rather than freelance terms
• Any core finance discipline qualifies
• Real influence on benchmark design inside the lab

Less good:

• Deal specialists are paid up to $50 more per hour on the IB and PE versions
• Hybrid Bay Area only, relocation self-funded
• Full-time for six months
• The lab is not named

About this listing

Posted by Mercor for a Cincinnatus LLC placement, confirmed open on 24 September 2026. Pay, location rules, hours and qualifications are the ad's own. See Mercor.