Mercor lists grading model derivations among its physics projects: does the approximation hold, do the limiting cases work, do the units survive. Sources are the open postings, read 13 October 2026.
The postings pay for checking the reasoning behind an answer
Mercor’s standing Physics Expert listing includes flagging a model that reaches the right final expression by reasoning that would fail if the assumptions changed. That is the skill every posting here is buying. The roles split three ways.
Solve and defend. micro1’s Physics Expert (PhD / Postdoc) posting asks for derivations with every assumption and approximation stated, written in LaTeX, with SymPy or Python checks. You also state special cases, boundary conditions and dimensional consistency. Its statistical-physics posting names Solver, Auditor and Adjudicator as separate assignments.
Write the problem and the rubric. Sovrano’s Physics Expert posting has you build tasks from problems in your own work and run them against frontier models. You then write a rubric specific enough that another expert would grade the same response the same way. Rubrics come up in 4 postings here. AfterQuery asks you to craft problems and check model answers for logic. SME Careers asks for prompts and ranked responses.
Judge dual-use requests. Some postings (3 here) centre on questions that a student and a bad actor might both ask. They are Mercor’s health physics and nuclear medicine roles and Sovrano’s nuclear physicist role. Mercor frames the line as the same shielding calculation protecting a worker or hiding a source. You label requests benign, dual-use or adversarial, judge the answers, and write the reference response. Mercor says it briefs experts on this in advance and lets you pause without penalty.
Who gets the PhD pay
A PhD is mentioned in 5 of the 14 roles, and micro1 prices its physics roles above the rest. It lists 5, with a median ceiling of $200. The other 9 come from Mercor, SME Careers, Sovrano AI and AfterQuery. Their hourly roles have a median ceiling of $80 and a highest of $125. Across all 12 hourly roles, ceilings run from $35 to $200.
What each platform asks:
- micro1’s PhD / Postdoc role asks for a PhD or advanced candidacy and two to five recent publications you can link on arXiv or by DOI. It expects about ten hours a week for eight to ten weeks.
- SME Careers’ Physicist posting asks for a master’s or PhD, and the stated profile names a top-100 university and a peer-reviewed paper.
- Sovrano asks for a bachelor’s degree, completed or in progress, with two years of applied physics preferred.
- Mercor asks for a graduate degree with research experience on its Physics Expert listing.
If you have a master’s, the posting wording matters more than the title. The SME university line is stated in the posting, so read it before you spend an interview on it.
Per-task pay applies to 2 of the 14 roles. Those are Mercor’s red-team roles, so do not compare them with an hourly figure.
Hours
micro1 states five to ten or more hours a week on two of its PhD roles. Mercor’s talent network says typical commitments run 15 to 30 hours a week, while Sovrano’s minimum is ten. Postdocs and faculty on fixed contracts should check these against their own duties.
Unpublished work stays out
The risk specific to physicists is that the best material for a hard problem is your own unpublished research. Keep it out.
- micro1’s AMO posting asks for examples from research or projects you can legally share. Treat that as the test for every task you write.
- Results from a collaboration, a grant or a lab that has not been released belong to more people than you.
- A university or national lab contract often has outside-activity and intellectual-property terms. Read yours. This site cannot say what they cover.
- Mercor’s nuclear and health physics postings (2 here) say the work must not draw on classified or export-controlled information. They also exclude anything under an NDA or prepublication review obligation.
Public textbook problems you rework yourself are the safest raw material.
Country limits and starting
Roles limited to the US: 0 of 14. The site shows 13 to a reader in the UK and 12 to one in Germany. Sovrano’s physics role names the US, UK, Ireland, Canada and Australia. Its nuclear panel names the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the EU. The guide to working from outside the US explains the wording.
Mercor says its pool does not accept or reject you on a listing, and that matching can take from a week to several months. Sovrano says its skills assessment takes most people four to six hours, with one attempt and no AI tools. micro1’s AMO role mentions an adaptive spoken AI interview. See the guides to Mercor’s interview and micro1’s interview.
What the postings do not say
- How many solved problems a reviewer accepts before you are paid again.
- Whether your solutions are reused, published or credited.
- How a PhD or publication list is checked.
- Whether SME’s top-100 university line is a hard cutoff.
This site is not affiliated with any platform named here, and passing a screening is not a promise of work.
Open physics roles right now
The 6 newest of 14 open roles this site lists today, with the pay each posting states.