MercorRed-teaming & safety
LLM Research Scientist (Pre-training & Computer Vision & Adversarial Robustness)
up to $120/hr
About this role, in Mercor's words
We're looking for experienced machine learning researchers with hands-on experience training and improving deep learning models end-to-end, across vision and language. You'll work on well-scoped empirical open-ended ML research problems.
What you'll do
Responsibilities
- Train image classifiers and generative image models from scratch, and fine-tune open-weight language models.
- Get the most out of limited data, compute, and model-size budgets.
- Make models robust — to adversarial inputs and to adversarial conversations.
Show all 5 itemsHide the other 2 in Responsibilities
- Compress models to meet hard size and latency constraints without sacrificing accuracy.
- Diagnose and resolve training issues.
Quoted from selected sections of Mercor's posting. The full posting may state other conditions. Read the full posting
A closer look
More context, when you need it.
Full job descriptionThe original posting, in Mercor's words
Posted by Mercor, reproduced here so you can judge the role before clicking. Original posting ↗
We're looking for experienced machine learning researchers with hands-on experience training and improving deep learning models end-to-end, across vision and language. You'll work on well-scoped empirical open-ended ML research problems.
Responsibilities
• Train image classifiers and generative image models from scratch, and fine-tune open-weight language models.
• Get the most out of limited data, compute, and model-size budgets.
• Make models robust — to adversarial inputs and to adversarial conversations.
• Compress models to meet hard size and latency constraints without sacrificing accuracy.
• Diagnose and resolve training issues.
Requirements
We are looking for candidates with strong expertise in one or more of the following areas:
Adversarial Robustness
Experience with:
• Adversarial training of image classifiers (e.g. PGD-based training, TRADES).
• Evaluating robust accuracy under standard threat models (e.g. L∞ attacks, AutoAttack) and avoiding gradient-masking pitfalls.
• Managing the robustness–accuracy trade-off and robust overfitting.
Efficient Computer Vision
Experience with:
• Training image classifiers end-to-end, especially for fine-grained recognition (many visually similar classes, few examples per class).
• Model compression: quantization, pruning, and knowledge distillation from large teachers into small students.
• Deploying models under hard size or latency budgets (on-device, edge, or embedded settings).
Generative Image Modeling
Experience with:
• Training image generative models from scratch: diffusion models, GANs, VAEs, or flow-based models.
• Iterating against sample-quality metrics such as FID.
• Training-efficiency tricks that produce good generators quickly and at small parameter counts.
LLM Post-Training & Behavioral Robustness
Hands-on experience with one or more of:
• Supervised fine-tuning and preference optimisation (DPO, RLHF, RLAIF) of open-weight language models, including building your own datasets via synthetic generation, noisy or weak supervision, and rejection sampling.
• Shaping conversational behaviour over multiple turns: resistance to persuasion and sycophancy, calibrated confidence, and knowing when to accept corrections.
• Alignment-style fine-tuning that changes a specific behaviour while preserving general capability.
Multilingual Pre-training
Experience with:
• Training multilingual or low-resource-language models from scratch.
• Tokenizer design across scripts and typologically diverse languages.
• Balancing highly unequal per-language data (sampling temperatures, cross-lingual transfer) in data-constrained regimes.
Additional Areas of Interest
Experience in any of the following is a plus:
• Scaling laws and training-efficiency research.
• Curriculum learning and data ordering.
• Model evaluation: benchmark construction, contamination control, statistically sound comparisons.
• Uncertainty estimation and model calibration.
• Data augmentation and synthetic data for robustness.
General Qualifications
• 3+ years of machine learning research experience (PhD research counts toward this requirement).
• Strong experience with PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow, or similar ML frameworks.
• Degree from a top-100 university, experience at a FAANG or comparable AI company, or an equivalent research track record through publications or impactful open-source contributions.
Why Join
• Work on cutting-edge machine learning research.
• Collaborate with leading AI researchers on challenging, high-impact projects.
• Flexible, project-based work with competitive compensation.
Working with MercorPay, getting started and work, from Mercor's own pages
What the platform publishes in general. These are not extra terms confirmed for this particular role.
- Getting paid
- Hourly work is paid every Wednesday for the previous week, through Stripe Connect or Wise, whichever Mercor assigns to your region. Stripe holds the first payout for 7 days. talent.docs.mercor.com/how-to/payments, talent.docs.mercor.com/policies/contracts
- Before your first paid task
- An AI interview of about 20 minutes, reused for other roles that need it, then any assessments the role asks for. Before logging hours: ID verification through Persona, a tax form, the contract documents, the Insightful time tracker, and a background check the onboarding guide says usually takes one to two weeks. talent.docs.mercor.com/support/ai-interview, talent.docs.mercor.com/how-to/apply, talent.docs.mercor.com/policies/contracts, talent.docs.mercor.com/how-to/id-verification, talent.docs.mercor.com/working/project-onboarding
- How much work
- Hearing back after the AI interview usually takes 2 to 4 weeks. When a project ends you are not moved to a new one automatically. talent.docs.mercor.com/support/ai-interview, talent.docs.mercor.com/support/project
- Contract
- Independent contractor with Mercor.io Corporation of San Francisco, which deducts no taxes. talent.docs.mercor.com/policies/taxes-work-authorization, talent.docs.mercor.com/support/legal
Read on the pages linked above on 23 Sep 2026. Platforms change these terms, so check the linked page before you rely on one.
Alex's experience on MercorA personal account, not a promise about your project
Alexruns this site and has worked on Mercor himself. Written 31 Aug 2026.
- Every interview I took used an AI interviewer. They always checked my microphone and camera and asked me to share my screen, and some included a timed exercise of around 25 minutes.
- Many later applications needed no new interview from me. With the required assessments complete and no other outstanding steps, applying could be close to one click.
- The application I checked did not ask for a rate. My offer matched my minimum in Work Preferences. That does not establish that Mercor always caps higher offers at your preference.
- Onboarding and setup came to about 4 hours, with more security and tool setup. Of the three platforms I worked on, it was the most complicated for me. That is an estimate from my projects, not a platform average.
- Mercor required the Insightful tracker on my project. I observed app and website usage monitoring, and I am unsure which screenshot settings applied, so check the configuration.
- I was paid for hours logged, once every 14 days, and I have not experienced late or incorrect payments. That was my arrangement. Mercor's current documentation describes weekly payout cycles, so check your own offer.
One person's applications, not a promise about yours.
What happens after you apply, first-handHow does the pay compare?Across Red-teaming & safety roles, not this role alone
From our own daily reads of every open listing on the platforms we follow, not from Mercor's posting. How we count.
Pay across the field: Red-teaming & safety
Across 8 roles in this field with a stated hourly rate in US dollars, on 4 platforms, the middle half pays $75 to $120 an hour at the top of the range, and the median is $100. This role's top rate, $120, is in the top quarter. Of the 6 distinct rates we count, 4 are lower and 0 are higher.
| Platform | Roles | Top of range, per hour |
|---|---|---|
| Alignerr | 5 | $75 to $120 |
| Claru | 1 | $100 |
| Mercor (this platform) | 1 | $84 |
| Handshake AI | 1 | $65 |
Sources and listing historyWhere this information comes from
This listing's history
- First seen here on 19 Aug 2026, and still on Mercor's list when we last read it on 13 Oct 2026.
- Posted by Mercor
- First seen by AIPayList
- Last seen live
- Listing ID
- list_AAABn9G5kyvGTlH1jQZGvpVY
Pay as the source states it: “100–120 USD HOUR”.
Platforms sometimes change a rate after posting. Every listing here is re-read at least once a day and corrected when its source moves, so a difference you see on the platform is usually a change made since the last read. How freshness works.
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