← All roles

Research Scientist - Environments, Data and Post-Training

Mercor· Research
Apply on company site
San Francisco$250k - $500kFull-timePosted 4w ago

About the role

Research Scientist at Mercor focusing on frontier post-training, developing novel training and evaluation methods, running rigorous experiments, and scaling successful approaches.

Responsibilities

  • Implement novel post-training methods that improve model reasoning, tool use, and agentic behavior.
  • Develop new training recipes for frontier open models.
  • Design and run experiments across datasets, reward functions, environments, and optimization strategies, including methods such as GRPO and DAPO.
  • Build reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) and other post-training pipelines at scale.
  • Investigate model capabilities and failure modes, then develop targeted training interventions.
  • Create methods for measuring data quality, usability, and causal impact on model performance.
  • Build scalable pipelines for data generation, filtering, augmentation, and selection.
  • Develop rubrics, evaluators, benchmarks, and scoring systems that inform training decisions.
  • Translate open-ended research questions into rigorous experiments and production systems.
  • Collaborate with researchers, applied AI teams, engineers, and domain experts producing training data.
  • Contribute to open-source post-training tools and research.

Qualifications

  • Demonstrated experience training and evaluating machine learning models.
  • A strong research record in post-training, reinforcement learning, language-model evaluation, data-centric ML, or a closely related field.
  • Ability to reason rigorously about model behavior, experimental results, and data quality.
  • Strong programming skills and experience implementing machine learning systems.
  • Knowledge of the current AI research landscape and important open problems.
  • Excitement to work in person in San Francisco, five days a week (with optional remote Saturdays).

Skills

Required:Machine learning model training and evaluationReinforcement learning and post-training methodsExperiment design and analysisProgramming and ML systems implementation

Benefits

  • Bi-annual performance bonus structure
  • Generous equity grant vested over 4 years
  • Up to $15k Relocation bonus
  • $10K housing bonus (if you live within 0.5 miles of our office)
  • $1.5K monthly stipend for meals
  • Free Equinox membership
  • $200 monthly laundry reimbursement
  • $200 monthly personal wellness reimbursement
  • Health, Dental, Vision insurance
Last updated Oct 14, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Mercor

Shape the future of work

Find top-tier, remote, AI roles for your expertise. Available only on Mercor.

AIremotejobstechnology
Company profileWebsite

More open roles at Mercor