Preclinical R&D Expert – In-house Drug Development

About this role

**Mercor is partnering with a venture-backed AI lab building frontier AI platforms and physics-based foundation models for chemistry, materials science, and drug discovery.** They're extending their platform into new areas of pharmaceutical development and are looking for hands-on preclinical R&D experts across drug modalities to help guide what they build. Are you a preclinical R&D scientist who has taken drug programs from the bench toward the clinic — and curious how AI is reshaping drug discovery? This is a hands-on role that blends your wet-lab and translational experience with a growing understanding of how scientific data trains the next generation of AI models. **In this role, you'll:** - Review technical materials and real-world R&D data in your area of expertise - Label, classify, and annotate scientific data and model outputs to improve model performance - Provide expert perspective on key scientific and development decisions (target/modality selection, optimization, trade-offs, risk) - Help define structure and quality standards for the client's dataset pipeline - Participate in expert discussions, interviews, and research engagements **You're a strong fit if you:** - Have hands-on, non-administrative preclinical R&D experience at a company that develops its own drug assets in-house and has taken programs to the clinic — Must Have - Work in a core R&D function: discovery biology, medicinal chemistry, protein/antibody engineering, computational, in vivo/translational, pharmacology/PK-PD, toxicology, or CMC/formulation — Must Have - Have hands-on experience with one or more drug modalities (small molecules, monoclonal antibodies, peptides, ADCs, bispecifics, mRNA, siRNA, ASOs, PROTACs, molecular glues, cell therapies, gene therapies, radioligand therapies, etc.) — Must Have - Have 5+ years of relevant industry R&D experience (flexible based on depth) - Have taken a program through lead optimization or IND-enabling/preclinical development (nice