STEM Expert – Chemistry & Computational Chemistry (PhD)

$45–90/hr

rate as listed

Workload: ~15h/week
Engagement: Project-based
Location: Worldwide
Field: Sciences

Evaluate chemistry and computational chemistry problems, reasoning chains, protocols, and data used to benchmark AI systems. This worldwide remote contractor role requires a relevant PhD, research experience, professional English, and depth in at least one named chemistry subfield.

The work

You will design, evaluate, and critique chemistry tasks used in AI benchmarking. Day-to-day work may include checking reaction mechanisms and synthesis plans, interpreting spectra, reviewing molecular simulations or electronic-structure calculations, analyzing chemical data, and identifying unsupported or irreproducible reasoning. You may also recommend changes to experimental protocols, simulation parameters, and software configurations.

What the platform screens for

The screen is likely to test whether you can defend technical decisions under follow-up rather than merely state conclusions. Relevant depth may come from organic synthesis, inorganic or organometallic chemistry, physical or theoretical chemistry, analytical chemistry and spectroscopy, computational chemistry and molecular dynamics, cheminformatics and drug discovery, or materials science and polymer chemistry. Required: Professional written and spoken English (C1 or higher). Proficiency in Python and/or subfield tools such as Gaussian, ORCA, Psi4, GROMACS, LAMMPS, or RDKit is also required.

Practical details

This is a contractor role open remotely worldwide. The listing does not specify whether assignments are fully asynchronous, a minimum weekly commitment, or typical working hours, so candidates should be ready to state their availability and time zone clearly during screening. Academic experience is strongly preferred, while publications, patents, open-source scientific software contributions, AI or ML-assisted chemistry work, drug discovery, reaction prediction, and retrosynthesis are additional preferences.

Pay band: $45–90/hr

What they look for

Computational Chemistry
Structural Bioinformatics
Cheminformatics
Proteomics & Metabolomics
Documentation
Verbal communication
Biology
organic chemistry
physical chemistry

Included with this listing

Interview prep — 10 questions

Matched to what this platform's screening actually measures. Answer each out loud in 60–90 seconds: claim → concrete example → implication.

What it tests: This tests whether your claimed expertise is tied to a verifiable research program and whether you can distinguish your personal work from that of your lab or collaborators.
A strong answer: Name the field, system or problem, methods, and a concrete result, then identify which experiments, calculations, analyses, or software you personally designed and executed. Include a publication, thesis chapter, patent, or other checkable output where applicable.
Where people lose it: Candidates lose points by summarizing the lab's broad mission without identifying their own decisions, methods, or research outputs.

Summary, eligibility guidance and screening preparation are prepared by Sidequest from the platform's posting. Check the source listing before applying.