$40,000 to $80,000 Mercor Research Fellowship

Organization: Mercor

Type: Fellowship

Location: Global

Deadline: September 26, 2026

Funding: Fully Funded

Mercor, the San Francisco AI data company behind the APEX benchmarks, funds researchers for three or six months to build a new AI benchmark, evaluation method or economic study of their own design. You pitch the project in a one-page proposal; if selected you get a stipend, compute, paid expert time and weekly mentorship from the APEX research team, working remotely or from Mercor's San Francisco office. **What you get:** - A stipend of $40,000 for a 3-month term or $80,000 for a 6-month term, paid as a one-time stipend - Unlimited API credits plus a dedicated budget for GPU compute and paid expert and human-data time - Weekly one-to-one mentorship with a member of the APEX research team, plus access to the broader research organisation - Access to frontier model APIs, Mercor's internal evaluation infrastructure and, where appropriate, real enterprise evaluation problems from Mercor's customers - Access to Mercor's marketplace and expert-network data for empirical work, subject to review - An optional desk in Mercor's San Francisco office for fellows who want to be in person - Introductions to Mercor's network of researchers across frontier labs and academia - Standout fellows are considered for a full-time offer on the APEX research team at the end of the fellowship **What you'll do:** - Propose and scope a new benchmark, evaluation technique or economic study in an area not well covered by existing work - Build and validate it: for benchmarks, design task specifications and grading rubrics with Mercor's network of vetted experts, pilot tasks, calibrate scoring and run frontier models to analyse where they fail; for economic studies, design field experiments with experts on the platform or run empirical analyses of enterprise data - Publish the results as a paper, an open dataset, a new APEX leaderboard or a methodology the team adopts, working with Mercor's research and engineering teams - Commit at least 30 hours a week for 3 to 6 months, full time preferred, remotely or at the San Francisco office **Key dates:** - Applications close 26 September 2026 at 06:00 UTC, which is 23:00 on 25 September in San Francisco (Mercor's own announcement graphic says submit proposals by September 25) - Posting published 22 August 2026 - Fellowship terms run 3 or 6 months; the careers page describes admission as rolling **More information:** - Focus areas include long-horizon agentic tasks in law, finance and consulting, real-world software engineering evaluation, accounting and finance workflows, AI-for-science evals, new economic benchmarks, evaluation methodology, the economics of human data platforms and the AI theory of the firm; strong pitches outside the list are welcome - Applications are made through Mercor's Ashby job board with a resume, LinkedIn URL and a one-page proposal - Listed on Mercor's careers site as a Temporary, Remote position in the Research department, with San Francisco, New York City and London as listed locations

MercorFellowship

$40,000 to $80,000 Mercor Research Fellowship

This one has closed

Archived

Opportunity type

Fellowship

Funding

Fully Funded

Location

Global

Deadline

Archived

About this opportunity

What you get:

A stipend of $40,000 for a 3-month term or $80,000 for a 6-month term, paid as a one-time stipend
Unlimited API credits plus a dedicated budget for GPU compute and paid expert and human-data time
Weekly one-to-one mentorship with a member of the APEX research team, plus access to the broader research organisation
Access to frontier model APIs, Mercor's internal evaluation infrastructure and, where appropriate, real enterprise evaluation problems from Mercor's customers
Access to Mercor's marketplace and expert-network data for empirical work, subject to review
An optional desk in Mercor's San Francisco office for fellows who want to be in person
Introductions to Mercor's network of researchers across frontier labs and academia
Standout fellows are considered for a full-time offer on the APEX research team at the end of the fellowship

What you'll do:

Propose and scope a new benchmark, evaluation technique or economic study in an area not well covered by existing work
Build and validate it: for benchmarks, design task specifications and grading rubrics with Mercor's network of vetted experts, pilot tasks, calibrate scoring and run frontier models to analyse where they fail; for economic studies, design field experiments with experts on the platform or run empirical analyses of enterprise data
Publish the results as a paper, an open dataset, a new APEX leaderboard or a methodology the team adopts, working with Mercor's research and engineering teams
Commit at least 30 hours a week for 3 to 6 months, full time preferred, remotely or at the San Francisco office

Key dates:

Applications close 26 September 2026 at 06:00 UTC, which is 23:00 on 25 September in San Francisco (Mercor's own announcement graphic says submit proposals by September 25)
Posting published 22 August 2026
Fellowship terms run 3 or 6 months; the careers page describes admission as rolling

More information:

Focus areas include long-horizon agentic tasks in law, finance and consulting, real-world software engineering evaluation, accounting and finance workflows, AI-for-science evals, new economic benchmarks, evaluation methodology, the economics of human data platforms and the AI theory of the firm; strong pitches outside the list are welcome
Applications are made through Mercor's Ashby job board with a resume, LinkedIn URL and a one-page proposal
Listed on Mercor's careers site as a Temporary, Remote position in the Research department, with San Francisco, New York City and London as listed locations

Who can apply

Background in economics, CS, ML, statistics, or an adjacent field (measurement, psychometrics, HCI, social science)
A specific, well-scoped idea for a benchmark, eval technique or empirical study you want to build; the fellowship is built around your pitch
Genuine interest in evaluation as a research discipline
Able to commit at least 30 hours per week for the duration of the fellowship; full time preferred
Comfortable in a startup environment with fast iteration and less hand-holding than an academic lab
Bonus: experience with agentic evaluation, RL environments, or domain expertise in law, finance, medicine or a scientific field
One-page proposal, resume and LinkedIn URL required on the application form

AI Verification

✓ AI Verified

Our AI read the official sources and cross-checked the key facts. Here is what held up, and what it could not confirm.

We could not fully verify this organization or all of its details. Check it independently on the official website before you apply, and never share sensitive personal or financial information until you are sure a request is genuine.

LOT Verification ScoreSolid

Cross-checked 9 of 11 key facts

Confirmed Our best read Not stated

Good to know

+A one-time stipend of $40,000 for three months or $80,000 for six, plus unlimited API credits and a budget for GPU compute and paid expert time.
+You design your own AI benchmark, evaluation method or economic study, with weekly one-to-one mentorship from Mercor's APEX research team.
+Remote or from Mercor's San Francisco office, with no nationality or age rule stated, and standout fellows are considered for a full-time research role.
+Free to apply: a CV, your LinkedIn and a one-page proposal.

Worth checking yourself

!Closes 25 September 2026 at 11pm Pacific time (06:00 UTC on 26 September), even though Mercor's careers page also says rolling admission.
!You need a background in economics, computer science, machine learning or statistics and a well-scoped research idea, so it suits graduate students and researchers.
!At least 30 hours a week for three to six months, full time preferred.
!The form asks about US work authorisation and visa sponsorship. Mercor does not say either is required.

Sources checked

MEmercor.comApplyJOjobs.ashbyhq.comOfficialAPapi.ashbyhq.comOfficialMEmercor.comApplyMEmercor.comApplyMEmercor.comApplyMEmercor.comApplyLIlinkedin.comOfficialXx.comOfficialOPopportunitiesforyouth.orgOfficial

LOT finds and checks opportunities from public sources. Always confirm details on the organiser’s own page before applying.