Machine Learning & NLP Expert (US-Based)

About the Role

Join a leading AI lab's cutting-edge GenAI team and put your machine learning and NLP expertise at the core of the AI revolution. The lab is building and evaluating frontier models and needs experienced practitioners to act as ground-truth experts: authoring challenging, real-world tasks, generating reference solutions, and evaluating model outputs to surface reasoning and capability gaps.

This is a part-time W-2 employment position with Cincinnatus LLC, an enterprise staffing company that serves as the employer of record (payroll, benefits, compliance) for professionals placed with a leading AI lab through Mercor's platform. It is a structured, role-based position — not a project-based or freelance engagement.

What You'll Do

• Design challenging, real-world ML and NLP problems drawn from your area of expertise (model training and evaluation, language understanding and generation, retrieval, applied ML pipelines) that target specific capability gaps in a frontier AI model
• Integrate these problems into an agentic development environment, preparing all necessary components in Python
• Evaluate the target model's performance on your tasks
• Identify tasks where the model fails and classify the nature of the failure
• Collaborate with fellow subject-matter experts to keep evaluations consistent and accurate

Requirements

• Deep, hands-on experience in machine learning and/or NLP, from applied industry work, research, or a graduate/PhD background
• Working proficiency in Python, applied in research, industry, or open-source work
• Strong command of modern ML/NLP methods, including transformers and large language models
• Ability to engage reliably for approximately 20 hours per week
• Strong written communication and the ability to work independently
• Prior experience in AI training, model evaluation, or data annotation is preferred

Compensation & Logistics

• Type: Part-time W-2 employment (via Cincinnatus LLC, placed with a leading AI lab)
• Compensation: Confirmed in offer, paid via standard payroll
• Location: Remote, must be based in the United States
• Commitment: Approximately 20 hours/week
• Cincinnatus LLC is a legal entity separate from Mercor; opportunities are discovered through Mercor's platform, but employment, onboarding, payroll, and benefits are administered by Cincinnatus
• Cincinnatus is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and provides reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans