# Mercor Research Fellowship - APEX

**Company:** [Mercor](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/mercor)
**Location:** Remote
**Role:** AI Research
**Salary:** $40k – $80k/yr
**Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Statistics, Benchmarking, Evaluation Methodology, Agentic Evaluation, Reinforcement Learning, Rubric Design, Python, Software Engineering, Accounting, Psychometrics, Hci, Gpu Computing, Scientific Computing
**Posted:** 2026-08-22

> Research fellows propose, build, validate, and publish benchmarks or evaluation methodologies for measuring frontier AI performance on economically valuable professional and scientific work. The fellowship requires a specific research pitch, relevant technical or adjacent-field background, and a commitment of at least 20 hours per week.

## Job Description

## What You’ll Do
- Propose and scope a new benchmark or evaluation technique in an under-covered domain, or a meaningfully harder version of an existing APEX benchmark.
- Design task specifications and grading rubrics with vetted domain experts, including lawyers, accountants, engineers, scientists, and consultants.
- Build and validate benchmarks by piloting tasks, calibrating scoring, and stress-testing for contamination and gameable shortcuts.
- Run frontier models against benchmarks and analyze where and why they fail.
- Publish results as a paper, open dataset, APEX leaderboard, or methodology adopted internally.
- Partner with research and engineering teams to incorporate findings into APEX’s public benchmark family.

## Focus Areas
- Long-horizon, multi-application agentic tasks in professional services, including law, finance, and consulting.
- Real-world software engineering evaluation beyond issue resolution.
- Professional accounting and finance workflows.
- AI-for-science evaluations in mathematics, biology, materials science, and theoretical physics.
- Evaluation methodology, including contamination resistance, rubric design, human-versus-model grading agreement, and cost-adjusted scoring.

## Requirements
- Genuine interest in evaluation as a research discipline.
- Background in computer science, machine learning, statistics, measurement, psychometrics, HCI, social science, or an adjacent field.
- A specific, well-scoped benchmark or evaluation-technique idea.
- Comfort working in a fast-paced startup environment with limited hand-holding.
- Ability to commit at least 20 hours per week for the fellowship duration.

## Nice-to-Haves
- Experience with agentic evaluation or reinforcement-learning environments.
- Domain expertise in law, finance, medicine, or a scientific field.

## Compensation & Benefits
- $40,000 stipend for 3 months or $80,000 stipend for 6 months.
- Unlimited API credits.
- Dedicated budget for GPU compute and paid expert or human-data time.
- Weekly one-on-one mentorship with an APEX research team member and regular access to the broader research organization.
- Access to frontier model APIs and Mercor’s internal evaluation infrastructure.
- Optional desk at Mercor’s San Francisco office.
- Introductions to researchers across frontier labs and academia.
- Standout fellows may be considered for a full-time offer on the APEX research team.

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