What the work actually involves

You sit between design craft and model evaluation. Half the time you are building — polished, interactive web prototypes across many product categories, written in HTML/CSS/JS, React and Tailwind, or assembled fast in Cursor, v0, Lovable, Bolt or Framer. These prototypes are reference material: they show the model what a well-considered dashboard, onboarding flow, settings panel or playful game UI looks like when someone with taste makes it. The other half is written critique. You review AI-generated interfaces and explain, in specific and actionable terms, why the spacing rhythm breaks down, why the hierarchy fails at the second scroll, why the motion curve feels cheap. That feedback often hardens into rubrics and principles that researchers use downstream.

What the screen is looking for

Mercor's screening for this role is unusually craft-heavy. Expect to be pushed on where you worked and what you personally shipped — the listing names Apple, Airbnb, Stripe, Figma, Linear, Spotify, Notion or top agencies as the shape of the background they want, with 7+ years in product design, design leadership, design engineering or creative front-end. Expect to be asked to critique something on the spot and to justify an opinion under follow-up, because the deliverable here is articulated judgment, not a Figma file. Expect questions about whether you actually write the code yourself. A portfolio of beautiful static screens without a working prototype behind it is the most common reason strong-looking candidates stall.

Logistics

  • Employment: W-2 with Cincinnatus LLC as employer of record, placed into a lab's extended workforce. Not 1099 contracting.
  • Hours: 40 hours/week, weekdays, sustained — this is not a nights-and-weekends side engagement.
  • Remote: Work is remote and largely async, with collaboration alongside researchers and other designers to keep standards consistent.
  • Pay: $80–110/hr observed for this band; actual offers depend on seniority and the specific placement, and are never guaranteed.

Who does well

Designers with range. One week you may be prototyping a dense, keyboard-driven productivity tool; the next, a bouncy consumer app or a 2D game HUD. Fluency with motion (Framer Motion, GSAP, Rive, Lottie) or WebGL and 3D is a genuine differentiator rather than a checkbox, and game design experience opens a second lane of work. What does not travel well is design-management experience without recent hands-on building.