Social Sciences PhD Expert

1. Role Overview

Mercor is seeking PhD-level history/adjacent social sciences experts to contribute to a large-scale supervised fine-tuning (SFT) project with a leading AI lab. Experts will help develop and evaluate complex prompts and responses across historical topics, enabling models to reason more accurately about past events, contexts, and narratives. This initiative aims to push the boundaries of AI’s ability to engage with nuanced, sourced historical content.

2. Key Responsibilities

• Create and refine historically accurate prompts and ideal responses across time periods and geographies

• Assess and improve AI-generated outputs for factual correctness, depth, and clarity

• Develop content tailored to a range of system personas (e.g., academic experts, generalist learners)

• Generate variants of questions to explore style, instruction-following, and persona-based response changes

• Identify and construct tasks likely to expose weaknesses in current state-of-the-art models

3. Ideal Qualifications

• PhD in history or closely related field (e.g., American Studies, European History, Global History, Anthro, etc)

• Specialized expertise in a defined historical era, region, or methodology

• Experience in academic writing, curriculum design, or public history preferred

• Strong analytical and written communication skills

• Comfort working independently and iteratively with minimal oversight

4. More About the Opportunity

• Remote and asynchronous — work on your own schedule

• Expected commitment: 10–20 hours/week

• Project duration: ~4+ months, with potential for continuation

• Includes structured tasks (e.g., revising model outputs) and open-ended ones (e.g., original content creation)

5. Compensation & Contract Terms

• $60-70/hour for U.S.-based applicants; adjusted for other geographies

• Paid weekly via Stripe Connect

• You’ll be classified as an independent contractor

6. Application Process

• Submit your resume to get started

• Complete a short form outlining your historical expertise

• Mercor will follow up within a few days with next steps

7. About Mercor

• Mercor is a talent marketplace that connects top experts with leading AI labs and research organizations

• Our investors include Benchmark, General Catalyst, Adam D’Angelo, Larry Summers, and Jack Dorsey

• Thousands of professionals across domains like law, creatives, engineering, and research have joined Mercor to work on frontier projects shaping the next era of AI

We consider all qualified applicants without regard to legally protected characteristics and provide reasonable accommodations upon request.

Contract and Payment Terms

• You will be engaged as an independent contractor.
• This is a fully remote role that can be completed on your own schedule.
• Projects can be extended, shortened, or concluded early depending on needs and performance.
• Your work at Mercor will not involve access to confidential or proprietary information from any employer, client, or institution.
• Payments are weekly on Stripe or Wise based on services rendered.
• Please note: We are unable to support H1-B or STEM OPT candidates at this time.

About Mercor

Mercor partners with leading AI labs and enterprises to train frontier models using human expertise. You will work on projects that focus on training and enhancing AI systems. You will be paid competitively, collaborate with leading researchers, and help shape the next generation of AI systems in your area of expertise.