Preclinical R&D Expert – In-house Drug Development
Listing checked August 29, 2026 · pay as published by Mercor
Overview
An AI lab backed by venture capital is building physics-based foundation models for chemistry, materials science, and drug discovery. The lab works with Mercor to bring in hands-on preclinical R&D experts who guide how AI systems interpret real pharmaceutical data. This remote contract runs about 10 hours per week and pairs bench-level scientific judgment with data annotation work. Your feedback on drug development decisions and data quality shapes how models reason about new medicines.
What You'll Do5
- 1Examine technical documents and actual R&D datasets drawn from your specialty area.
- 2Label and classify scientific data and AI model outputs to sharpen model accuracy.
- 3Advise on major scientific and development choices, including target or modality selection, optimization trade-offs, and risk.
- 4Shape the structure and quality requirements for the client's data pipeline.
- 5Join expert panels, interviews, and research sessions to inform platform direction.
Requirements6
- 1Hands-on, non-administrative preclinical R&D experience at a company that develops its own drug assets and has advanced programs to the clinic.
- 2Work in a core R&D function: discovery biology, medicinal chemistry, protein or antibody engineering, computational science, in vivo or translational work, pharmacology and PK/PD, toxicology, or CMC and formulation.
- 3Direct experience with one or more drug modalities such as small molecules, monoclonal antibodies, peptides, ADCs, bispecifics, mRNA, siRNA, ASOs, PROTACs, molecular glues, cell therapies, gene therapies, or radioligand therapies.
- 4At least 5 years of industry R&D experience, with flexibility for deeper expertise.
- 5Experience moving a program through lead optimization or IND-enabling preclinical development.
- 6Background in mid-sized, emerging, or resource-constrained biotech, ideally outside the top-20 pharmaceutical companies.
Who Should Apply
The ideal candidate has spent years at a biotech or pharma company doing hands-on preclinical work that moved molecules toward the clinic. You bring deep familiarity with a core R&D function and at least one drug modality, plus enough breadth to reason about trade-offs across target selection, optimization, and development risk. This role is not a fit for scientists whose experience is limited to CRO/CDMO services, academic research, QC or analytical work, clinical development, diagnostics, or regulatory and medical writing. A typical rejection reason is a lack of in-house drug development experience or no history of taking a program through lead optimization or IND-enabling studies. A common miss is failing to show how your scientific judgment applies to messy, real-world datasets rather than just to controlled experiments.
Salary Insight
Pay is $60 to $100 per hour for this ongoing part-time contract. That range suits experienced preclinical scientists from individual contributor to director level, and it reflects the senior advisory nature of the work plus the flexibility of a remote, 10-hour weekly commitment.
Pay and demand for AI Training roles
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$70/hour
This role
$60–$100/hr
Most AI Training roles pay $40–$95 per hour. This role's pay falls inside that range.
Based on 966 similar roles that publish pay · 301 publish only a top rate; those count at the rate they gave
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Compensation
$60–100/hr
Required Skills
Application Tip
In your application, name the exact drug modalities you have worked on and the stage at which your programs entered the clinic. Also mention any experience labeling or structuring scientific data, since that maps to the core function of improving AI model performance.
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