AI doesn't get expert
on its own.
AI labs and the companies that work with them pay professionals to test, evaluate and improve AI systems using real domain judgment. Sidequest shows you where that expertise is wanted, what it pays, and how the screening works.
1019 open roles11 fields5 platforms
Independent Free for professionals
Built for
A fluent answer can still be wrong.
Spotting why often takes someone who actually knows the field.
Fluent is not the same as correct
A model can produce a confident, well-structured answer in your field and still get a step wrong. How it reads gives nothing away.
The flaw is usually a domain flaw
A misapplied standard, an assumption that does not hold, a conclusion the premises do not support. Spotting it is where the expertise shows.
Evaluating quality is expert work
Saying what an answer should have been, and against which standard, is judgment — and it is what AI labs and the companies that work with them pay professionals for.
Your expertise is the qualification.
Live counts by field. Where nothing is open today the field is still tracked, and role alerts cover it.
Latest roles
1019 open roles across 11 fields
Also browse remote jobs for experts and high-paying remote jobs.
Ethos Expert Network — Create Profile & Get Matched
Create an Ethos expert profile to be considered for paid expert calls, consulting, market research and AI training projects. Ethos screens and matches with AI tools and human review; an AI voice screen may be part of the process. Projects, rates and requirements vary, and no work or matching is guaranteed.
Handshake AI Fellowship — Apply & Get Matched
Apply to the Handshake AI fellowship, verify your identity, and be matched to paid AI evaluation and training projects with project-specific training before any paid task. US work authorization is required. Projects, rates and requirements vary, and no work or matching is guaranteed.
Senior Software Engineer
micro1 places senior software engineers with an AI lab to grade model-generated code and build hard engineering problems with reference solutions and tests. Work is remote and contractor-based, with observed rates in the $245–280/hr range depending on background and task type.
Audio Engineer (Speech / TTS Audio Specialist) – Brazilian Portuguese
Edit and quality-check Brazilian Portuguese voice recordings for speech and text-to-speech training datasets. The work combines audio restoration, technical compliance checks, linguistic judgment and consistent batch processing.
Machine Learning / Data Science Expert
AfterQuery contracts data scientists and ML engineers with 1–3 years of professional experience to build, train, and document models that become training and evaluation material for AI systems. Work is remote and asynchronous over a 2–3 week window, at roughly 10–20 hours per week on the projects you accept.
Healthcare Strategy Consultant
A foundational AI lab needs healthcare and life sciences strategy consultants to build and critique slide decks — commercial due diligence, payer and hospital strategy, pipeline assessments — that serve as training data for a language model. Work is remote and self-scheduled at 5–20 hours per week, with an observed rate of $100/hour and an AI voice screen in the hiring process.
What the work pays
Median hourly rate by field. Medians are Sidequest calculations over live listings; each listing shows the platform's own published rate.
Run the numbers on your own field.
Most evaluation work is paid by the hour and scheduled around you. Pick your field and the hours you could spare — the starting rate is the current median on our listings, and you can change it.
Median on our listings for generalist is $70, across 136 rate observations spanning $8–$350.
An estimate, not an offer. What you are paid depends on your credentials and how you score in screening, and hours are never guaranteed — most people treat this as a supplement rather than a salary.
Platforms covered by Sidequest
What each one screens for, how it pays, and who it suits, written independently of the platforms.
Mercor
Credentialed workCredentialed domain work in medicine, law, finance and PhD-level STEM. Screening includes credential verification and an AI-led video interview.
micro1
Task-based workEvaluation, annotation and rubric work with a wide range of role types, including engineering and language queues. Screening is a skills assessment and an AI interview.
Handshake AI
US networkThe AI evaluation arm of Handshake, the US college career platform. General evaluation work needs no AI background; domain-specific projects require the relevant credentials.
Ethos
Expert networkCreate a profile, verify your identity, and be matched to expert calls, consulting, research and AI projects. AI-assisted screening with human review; an AI voice screen may be part of it.
AfterQuery
Listings + assessmentsFixed-rate listings and assessment-gated pools spanning medicine, law, finance, engineering, the sciences, languages and creative work. Apply directly, or pass one unpaid assessment for ongoing matched work in a domain.
Turing
Open marketplaceA wide-open board of engineering, science, legal, finance and domain-expert contract work behind frontier AI labs — most listings state a rate, and many pay a referral bonus on top of it.
How Sidequest works
Sidequest is not an employer or an agency. It tracks the roles the platforms publish, shows what they pay, and sends you to the platform's own posting to apply.
Pick your fields
11 fields with open roles, filtered to the ones you hold credentials in. Or browse everything — every listing is public.
Check the listing
Each role shows the platform, the rate exactly as they published it, and when it was listed. The source posting is one click away.
Apply on the platform
You apply with them, not with us. If you are accepted through our link, the platform may pay us a referral commission. Your rate is unaffected.
A number you can't trace is a number we don't print.
Sidequest is written for people who check. So every claim on a listing is either the platform's own words or absent — no averages, no estimates, no “competitive”.
Every figure has a source
The rate on a listing is the platform's own published figure, taken from its posting. If the posting states none, the field is empty. The summary, eligibility guidance and screening preparation are prepared by Sidequest from that posting, and are labelled as ours.
Nothing is inferred on a listing
No role carries an estimated range or a “market rate”. Whenever Sidequest publishes a median — on the rates page, the homepage or the platforms comparison — it is labelled as our calculation over the listings we track, never as a platform's figure.
Listings are re-checked at the source
Every role is re-checked against its source on each scrape and marked inactive when it is no longer available there.
Rates are set by the platforms
We have no influence over them and earn nothing extra when they rise. Sidequest is free to use.
Know the market before you apply.
Mercor alternatives for AI training work
Compare Mercor alternatives for AI training and evaluation work using current Sidequest data on open roles, advertised pay, fields and screening.
Read itmicro1 alternatives for AI training work
Compare micro1 alternatives for AI training and evaluation work using current Sidequest data on open roles, advertised pay, fields and screening.
Read itAI Evaluation vs Data Annotation vs AI Training
The labels overlap. Separate the activity you perform from the way a team uses the resulting data.
Read itPick your fields. We email you when roles appear.
One daily email listing new roles in your fields, sent only on days there are any. Separately, a weekly roundup collects guides and analysis. Change your fields or unsubscribe from any email.
Daily email only when there are new roles · weekly guides and analysis
Questions, answered plainly
No. Sidequest is free to use. We earn through referral relationships with participating platforms — if you are accepted through one of our links, the platform may pay us a commission. Your pay rate on any platform is never affected by our referral.
From the platform's own posting. A rate appears on a listing only when the platform published one; where they publish nothing, the field is left empty rather than estimated. Whenever Sidequest publishes a median — on the rates page, the homepage or the platforms comparison — it is labelled as our calculation over the listings we track.
Sidequest is built for professionals with domain expertise — clinicians, lawyers, analysts, engineers, researchers and linguists — looking for AI evaluation and expert-work opportunities related to their field. Eligibility and screening requirements vary by platform and role.
No. Sidequest is independent of the platforms it lists. We are not a recruiter — the platforms screen and hire you directly, and we have no influence on the outcome. Commissions do not buy placement or favourable coverage.
Two things, and only when there is something to send. One daily email lists new roles in the fields you picked, sent only on days there are any. Separately, a weekly roundup collects guides and analysis. Every email carries an unsubscribe link.
More on how we earn in the referral disclosure.
Put your credentials where they're wanted.
Free to use. Every listing links to the platform's own posting.