About The Job Mercor connects elite creative and technical talent with leading AI research labs. Headquartered in San Francisco, our investors include Benchmark , General Catalyst , Peter Thiel , Adam D'Angelo , Larry Summers , and Jack Dorsey .

Position: Drug Discovery Scientist / Toxicology Expert

Type: Contract Compensation: $70–$100/hour Location: Remote Role Responsibilities

• Review and annotate datasets related to drug discovery, pharmacology, and safety biology. Interpret experimental outputs from target biology studies, biochemical assays, cellular models, and safety screens.
• Analyze relationships between compound structure, potency, selectivity, exposure, and toxicity signals. Identify mechanistic explanations behind efficacy or toxicity findings across discovery experiments.
• Audit annotated scientific datasets for biological, pharmacological, and safety accuracy. Validate structure–activity relationships (SAR), target engagement logic, and pharmacokinetic interpretations.
• Contribute to annotation guidelines for drug discovery workflows, SAR, pharmacokinetics and ADME reasoning, toxicity mechanisms, and safety pharmacology.
• Review AI-generated reasoning traces involving drug mechanism of action, target biology interpretation, toxicity mechanisms, and risk assessment. Provide structured feedback to improve scientific rigor, causal reasoning, and translational relevance in model outputs.
• Contribute to scientific standards documentation and training materials for model development. Help define gold-standard examples of drug discovery reasoning and toxicity interpretation.

Qualifications Must-Have

• PhD, PharmD, DVM, MD, or MS with significant industry experience in Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, Chemical Biology, Molecular Biology, Pharmaceutical Sciences, or Biochemistry.
• 3–5+ years of hands-on experience in drug discovery or safety assessment, including drug discovery programs from target validation through lead optimization, SAR analysis, pharmacokinetics (PK) and ADME interpretation, and toxicology and safety pharmacology studies.
• Strong expertise in target biology and mechanism-of-action reasoning, dose-response relationships and exposure margins, and translational interpretation between preclinical and clinical findings.
• Experience reviewing primary experimental data and study reports.
• Exceptional attention to scientific accuracy and mechanistic reasoning.

Preferred

• Experience in pharmaceutical or biotechnology drug discovery teams.
• Background in lead optimization, translational biology, or nonclinical safety.
• Familiarity with DMPK workflows, safety biomarkers, and regulatory toxicology considerations.
• Experience contributing to cross-functional discovery teams.
• Exposure to AI/ML tools applied to biomedical research.

Application Process (Takes 20–30 mins to complete)

• Upload resume
• AI interview based on your resume
• Submit form

Resources & Support

• For details about the interview process and platform information, please check: https://talent.docs.mercor.com/welcome/welcome
• For any help or support, reach out to: support@mercor.com

PS: Our team reviews applications daily. Please complete your AI interview and application steps to be considered for this opportunity. ,