Mercor · STEM & research
LLM Research Scientist (Pre-training & Computer Vision & Adversarial Robustness)
Listed on Mercor as “LLM Research Scientist (Pre-training & Computer Vision & Adversarial Robustness)”
What this actually is
You design problems that stump current AI models, evaluate AI reasoning against the correct answer, write rubrics, and provide expert feedback. Often the highest-paid category because the expertise pool is small. The platform title (LLM Research Scientist (Pre-training & Computer Vision & Adversarial Robustness)) reflects the rate band and the expertise required, not the day-to-day work.
Advertisement
Can you do this on your visa?
F-2 / F-4 / F-5 / F-6: open. E-1 to E-7: needs concurrent-employment permit. D-2 / D-4 students: S-3 permit, 20 hr/week cap. D-10 / D-8: case by case.
Korean tax on USD income
First 5 years in Korea: foreign-source income only taxed if remitted into Korea. After year 5: worldwide income. Full tax guide.
Original posting from Mercor
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.
Quoted from Mercor’s public listing on 2026-09-08. We don’t edit platform copy; honest framing is in the title and the “what this actually is” block above.
Related AI training jobs
Mercor · STEM & research
Applied Chemistry Benchmark Specialist - review AI outputs in your specialty
$61-$77/hr · Remote · USD
Mercor · STEM & research
Applied Mathematics Benchmark Specialist - review AI outputs in your specialty
$61-$77/hr · Remote · USD
Mercor · STEM & research
Atomistic & Surface Modeling Experts (Computational Materials & Catalysis)
$84/hr · Remote · USD
Mercor · STEM & research
Bilingual Arabic STEM Expert (PhD) — AI Safety - review AI outputs in your specialty
$38-$42/hr · Remote · USD
More on this platform
About Mercor
AI-interview-based talent network. One application, voice interview with their AI, then matched to projects across coding, research, and specialist work. Pay scales with track and seniority.
Mercor review: AI-interview talent network
4.1/5 on Glassdoor, fastest-growing platform in the category (+509% YoY). What the AI video interview actually asks, real pay across coding/research/medical/legal/finance tracks ($25-$200/hr), and the project-availability problem.
See all AI training jobs
Browse by category and compare across all eight platforms we cover.