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Applied Mathematics Benchmark Specialist

Mercor Mercor ContractRemote $61–77/hr
Posted Aug 13, 2026 · ✓ Still open — checked 39 minutes ago

Quick facts

Pay
$61–77 / hour
Type
Contract
Location
Remote
Hours
10+ hours / week
Background
PhD
Skills
Mathematics
Platform
Mercor — 299 open jobs
Typical pay at Mercor
$45–180/hour · median $84 (164 jobs on our site)
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Pay: $61 – $77/hour
Commitment: Hourly
Field: Life, Physical, and Social Science

Role Overview

We are seeking expert mathematicians to author and review high-quality academic assessment content for an AI research initiative. You will write and verify rigorous multiple-choice questions across core mathematics domains, evaluate solution quality, and help establish gold-standard benchmarks used to advance AI capabilities.

You will be assigned one of two task types:

  • Question Authoring — Create original, challenging multiple-choice questions in your area of mathematical expertise, rate their difficulty, and submit them for review.
  • Question Verification — Review pre-written questions for accuracy, clarity, and rigor. Edit where needed, rate difficulty, and document any changes made.

Mathematics Domains Covered

Signal Processing, Financial Mathematics & Actuarial Science, Mathematical Economics, Mathematical Modeling of Ecological & Biological Systems, Mathematical Programming & Combinatorial Optimization, Geomathematics & Climate Modeling.

Key Responsibilities

  • Author original math questions that test deep conceptual understanding, not surface-level recall
  • Ensure questions are unambiguous, self-contained, and precisely defined — all necessary information must be in the problem statement
  • Rate each question's difficulty: Medium (intro undergraduate), Hard (advanced undergraduate), or Expert (post-graduate and above)
  • Provide 1 correct answer and 9 plausible but subtly incorrect alternatives that challenge expert-level solvers
  • Write step-by-step Chain-of-Thought solutions with clear, concise intermediate steps in markdown format
  • Supply 1–5 academic references per question from reputable sources (peer-reviewed journals, university repositories)
  • For verification tasks: flag issues with clarity, completeness, precision, or solvability and justify any edits made

Ideal Qualifications

  • PhD or doctoral candidate in Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, or a closely related field
  • Master's degree considered for candidates with exceptional depth in a specific subdomain
  • Strong command of graduate-level mathematical concepts and formal proof writing
  • Experience with rigorous academic problem design or mathematical competition writing is a strong plus
  • Excellent written English and ability to express complex ideas clearly and concisely

More About the Opportunity

  • Expected commitment: 10+ hours/week
  • Asynchronous, fully remote work

Mercor is an AI-driven hiring marketplace that places professionals on contracts with leading AI labs. You apply once, complete a short AI interview, and are then matched to open projects.