Company profile

Mercor

A marketplace placing specialists into paid remote contract work with AI companies. One profile and one AI interview, reused across every role you apply to.

25 open rolesUSA

Mercor is a marketplace that places people into paid remote work with AI companies and other clients — a lot of it evaluating, training, and reviewing AI model output in your own field of expertise. You are not applying to Mercor as an employer in the usual sense. You build one profile, pass their screening once, and that screening is then reused across every role you apply to.

That reuse is the single most important thing to understand about the platform. The work is front-loaded: the first application is slow because you are setting up a profile and sitting an interview. Applications after that are fast, because the assessments carry over.

What the Mercor work actually is

Contracts are hourly, remote, and contractor-based rather than employment. Time is tracked through a tool called Insightful, and you are paid weekly for the hours you log. Roles span software engineering, data, writing, medicine, law, finance and many other domains — the common thread is that a client needs a qualified human to produce or judge work in a specialist area.

What you need before you start

A desktop or laptop. You can browse listings on a phone, but you cannot complete the interview on one. Mobile browsers are not supported.
Google Chrome. Edge and Safari work; Firefox and mobile browsers are explicitly unsupported.
A working camera and microphone. The interview will not start until both pass a system check.
A CV as a text-based PDF. One to two pages, under 2MB, simple layout, no images or tables, with clear Education / Experience / Skills headings. Scanned or image-based PDFs fail to parse.
A quiet room and a stable connection. Headphones and an external microphone are recommended.

Common reasons people stall

Three things account for most abandoned applications. A CV exported as an image rather than text, so the parser cannot read it. Attempting the interview on a phone or in Firefox, where it simply will not run. And leaving an application half-finished — progress saves automatically, but listings close without warning, and a closed listing cannot be completed.

One more worth knowing in advance: applications cannot be withdrawn once submitted. They stay under review until the hiring team decides, then drop off your dashboard on their own after a few weeks.

How hiring works here

Mercor's process is unusual in that screening happens once, up front, rather than per employer. Here is the full sequence. 1. CREATE YOUR ACCOUNT Sign up at work.mercor.com with passwordless email verification or Google sign-in. No password to set. 2. BUILD YOUR PROFILE (work.mercor.com/profile) Upload your CV as a PDF and Mercor parses it to pre-fill your roles, skills and education. You then confirm the required fields: first and last name, email, phone number, city, country, and your LinkedIn profile (or tick that you do not have one). Do not stop at the parsed version. Their own guidance asks for 3-5 bullets per role written outcomes-first (what you delivered, for whom, what changed), two to four representative projects with the problem, your role, the stack and the result, and skills separated into what you use daily versus occasionally. Add your time zone, weekly capacity and contracting preferences. Uploading a new CV later re-parses it and suggests updates, which you can review before saving. 3. FIND A ROLE (work.mercor.com/explore) The Explore tab in the left sidebar lists everything open. Filter by Job fit (matched to your profile), Trending, Newest, or Most pay. 4. START THE APPLICATION Click Apply Now and you get a checklist rather than a single form. Steps vary by role but typically include confirming your CV, completing one or more assessments, and verifying your work authorisation. Steps can be done in any order and progress saves automatically. 5. SIT THE AI INTERVIEW This is the real gate. An AI interviewer asks role-specific questions drawn from your CV for roughly 20 minutes, records video and audio, and produces a transcript that is scored. Practise first. Mercor offers a free practice interview that is unlimited, tied to no application, and has no effect on your prospects. There is no reason to make the official attempt your first. You get up to three retakes of the official interview, self-served from your dashboard under Assessments, and only your most recent attempt is scored. 6. IDENTITY VERIFICATION Mercor verifies your identity once, through a service called Persona. 7. SUBMIT AND WAIT After submitting you get a confirmation with an expected timeline. Realistically, expect 2-4 weeks to hear whether you have progressed, and keep applying to other roles meanwhile. INTERVIEW TIPS THAT ACTUALLY MATTER - Keep answers tight. Long silences make the AI think you have finished and interrupt you. If it cuts in, say you were not done. - Structure answers around situation, task, action, result. Roughly a minute each. - Some interviews require full-screen sharing. Only full-screen is supported, and the "hall of mirrors" effect is normal. - Have pen and paper ready, and a calculator if the role is quantitative. - Interviews are in English unless the listing says otherwise. - You may use AI tools for grammar and wording, but not to compose your answers. That breaches their LLM usage policy. - There is no human alternative. The AI interview is the only screening route, and you cannot request a transcript or feedback afterwards.

Remote policy

Fully remote, worldwide, on hourly contractor agreements rather than employment. But payment eligibility is the thing to check before you invest any time, because it is decided by country and there is no way around it. Mercor pays through Stripe Connect in most countries, and through Wise in Brazil, the UAE, Nepal and Turkey. You do not choose your provider — it is assigned by region. For African applicants specifically, this is worth reading carefully. Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya's neighbours Tanzania and Rwanda, plus Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Cote d'Ivoire, Gabon, Gambia, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia and Senegal are all supported. Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Cameroon and the DRC are on Mercor's unsupported list, meaning they cannot currently issue contracts there at all. Their documentation asks people in those countries not to begin work. The list is reviewed periodically, so it is worth rechecking rather than assuming it is permanent. HOW AND WHEN YOU GET PAID Hourly contractors are paid every Wednesday at around 12:00 PM PST, covering the previous work week (Saturday 00:00 to Friday 23:59 IST). That is roughly a five-day lag from your last working day. Bonuses, work-trial pay and referral earnings run on a separate twice-weekly schedule. On Stripe you can choose a standard bank transfer (2-3 business days) or an instant payout (around 30 minutes), changeable under Profile then Account then Payout preferences. Three requirements catch people out: Stripe pays to bank accounts only, so debit cards, prepaid cards and digital wallets will not work; two-factor authentication by SMS is mandatory; and the bank account must be in your own legal name. Joint accounts, business accounts, or an account in a relative's name will fail Stripe's identity checks.

Open roles at Mercor

Video Editing Professional

Mercor

Mercor

What the Mercor work actually is

What you need before you start

Common reasons people stall

How hiring works here

Remote policy

Open roles at Mercor

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