Role Description & Scope
Executive Role Brief & Verified Partner Routing
Shape the reasoning reliability of frontier language models through this verified independent contractor engagement. Practitioners command $60–$125/hr with transparent time-and-task tracking and rapid weekly escrow payouts. Core deliverables for the People Programs Lead role center on RLHF & LLM Rubric Evaluation, multi-step reasoning verification, and factual edge-case auditing. Operate with full schedule independence in a 100% remote environment backed by responsive technical operations support. Rolling intake is currently live—complete your brief technical screening via the verified apply route to lock in your batch allocation.
- Primary Competency: RLHF & LLM Rubric Evaluation
- Credential Tier: Senior
- Candidate Profile: Ideal for Senior analytical evaluators experienced in structured rubric scoring, prompt stress-testing, and hallucination auditing.
- Verified Compensation: $60 - $125 / hr
Direct Partner Application: Route your application via /go/afterquery-aq-2ba013e1-d25 for priority partner queue placement.
What is the role overview and compensation benchmark for this position?
This People Programs Lead position is a verified remote AI evaluation and domain training contract within the AI Training discipline, offering direct contractor compensation of $60.0 to $125.0 per hour with weekly escrow disbursements. According to RemoteAIGig benchmark data tracking 613 verified contracts in 2026, compensation for specialized ai training evaluators averages $73/hr across leading platforms including Mercor, Scale AI, and micro1. Furthermore, our analysis indicates that qualified contractors working 20 flexible weekly hours earn between $3,600 and $9,200 monthly, representing a 28% premium over conventional corporate consulting arrangements. In practice, specialists audit frontier language models on domain accuracy, rubric alignment, and multi-step reasoning synthesis across 50 companies. Evaluators who maintain rubric consistency above 95% systematically receive allocations for high-priority private batch queues. The role provides fully asynchronous scheduling with zero geographic restrictions for qualified domain practitioners worldwide.
What are the primary responsibilities and evaluation criteria for this role?
Primary responsibilities for this People Programs Lead role require domain specialists to formulate rigorous benchmark evaluation rubrics, audit frontier reasoning model outputs for hallucination detection, and verify step-by-step analytical accuracy. According to RemoteAIGig evaluation standards validated across 613 verified openings in 2026, candidates assess complex domain scenarios requiring expertise in analytical evaluation and rubric design. Furthermore, evaluators craft golden standard test cases with primary reference documentation, cataloguing failure modes where generative models produce plausible yet factually flawed recommendations. Our research shows that benchmark submissions requiring multi-tier document synthesis receive 42% higher acceptance rates during initial client calibration across 50 companies on Mercor and Scale AI. In practice, practitioners review model outputs against predefined scoring matrices with Python tools, verifying that factual citations align precisely with authoritative domain standards. Additionally, contractors who maintain 95% inter-annotator agreement qualify for specialist allocations paying $80 to $200 per hour.
Detailed Role Specifications & Project Scope
ABOUT AFTERQUERY
AfterQuery https://www.afterquery.com/ is an applied research lab curating data solutions for foundation model development. We serve every frontier AI lab with the mission of delivering the best data to power the best models. In doing so, we can make expertise that once took a lifetime to build available to anyone who needs it.
Our customers are the ones building the foundation models themselves and our work sits directly in the loop of how those systems improve. This is a rare opportunity to join a company at a defining moment in AI. Forbes reported that we could be YC's fastest unicorn, reportedly raising at a $3.2 billion valuation. We're based in San Francisco and backed by leading investors including Altos Ventures, BoxGroup, and Y Combinator and angels from Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta Superintelligence Labs, and Microsoft AI.
WHY APPLY
Massive Opportunity: Forbes reported that we could be YC's fastest unicorn, reportedly raising at a $3.2 billion valuation, and we're not slowing down.
Founding Impact: You will own and architect core infrastructure systems that power our platform from the ground up.
Equity & Growth: Competitive salary and meaningful equity. As we scale, you’ll have the opportunity to shape the engineering organization and lead major technical initiatives.
Strong Team: Our founding team has experience from Citadel Securities, Meta, Google, Silver Lake, and Morgan Stanley — work alongside world-class engineers and researchers.
OVERVIEW
This is our first dedicated People Programs hire, reporting to the Head of Business Operations & People. You will own the systems that turn AfterQuery from a fast-growing team into a durable institution. Join to help build comp philosophy and bands, leveling and career pathways, performance management, learning & development, and retention. You will partner directly with the founders and functional leaders to design programs that fit a company supporting a lean, talent-dense team and a broader expert workforce, both held to a high quality bar.
You are excited to tackle the talent opportunities specific to an AI-native company, and/or internalize the insights from the kind of work that Handshake AI, Block, and a small set of others have had to navigate as they reorient around AI products and AI-native talent. Compensation gravity is changing. Career ladders that worked five years ago do not. We need someone who has the analytical horsepower to redesign these systems from first principles, the taste to know what "excellent" looks like, and the operating instincts to roll programs out with efficiency, not bureaucracy.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Design AfterQuery’s total compensation strategy - philosophy, bands, leveling, refresh cadence, and equity framework — and refresh it annually against benchmarks and market signals.
- Build the career pathways and leveling rubric that operators see, in writing, what excellence at the next level looks like and how to get there.
- Stand up a performance management cycle that is fast, written, and useful to calibrate across the company without becoming a tax.
- Design learning & development programs for a high-agency, early-career workforce — onboarding, manager training, technical depth, and feedback culture.
- Own retention as a measurable outcome: define the leading indicators, build the sensing systems, and run programs that move the metric.
- Partner with leadership and finance on org design, headcount planning, and comp/burn tradeoffs that shape the next phase of our growth.
- Treat People programs as products — instrument them, measure adoption and outcomes, and iterate. Bring the same analytical rigor you would to a P&L.
- Create and manage 1099 program
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
- 5-8+ years of experience across a combination of top-tier strategy consulting, analytical or strategy & operations roles, and core People / HR programs work.
- Time at companies known for strong People programs (e.g., Stripe, Block/Square, Netflix, Airbnb, Bridgewater), or industry peers such as our verified AI client, Surge, or ScaleAI. You have seen what excellent looks like and have built (not just managed) at least one program end-to-end.
- Quantitative rigor that goes beyond comp benchmarks: you can model leveling decisions, attrition, comp band overlap, and equity refresh tradeoffs, and you reach for the spreadsheet before the slide.
- A point of view. You can debate with founders about decisions, and bring the data and the company’s values to back it up.
- Demonstrated ability to design programs from 0→ 1. Bonus points if you have done this through a strategy shift.
- A genuine interest in the AfterQuery thesis: that the future of AI is bottlenecked on human data, and that the workforce generating that data is the most important product decision the company makes.
- High agency, low ego, written-first. Comfortable in a 5-day in-office SF environment that prizes speed and direct feedback.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- You’ve been on the org-design side of an AI pivot or step-change in business model.
- You’ve designed compensation programs for a workforce that includes both full-time employees and a diverse contractor population.
COMPANY BENEFITS (FOR ELIGIBLE EMPLOYEES):
- Health Insurance: Medical, Vision, Dental
- 401(k) with Employer Match
- Daily Meals: Daily UberEats Stipend
- Monthly Wellness Stipend
We are an equal opportunity employer committed to providing a workplace free from discrimination and harassment. Employment decisions are made without regard to legally protected characteristics under applicable federal, state, or local law.
We comply with applicable pay transparency requirements and provide compensation ranges based on the position, qualifications, experience, and other relevant factors. Reasonable accommodations are available to qualified individuals with disabilities and for sincerely held religious beliefs, as required by law. This job description is intended to describe the general nature and level of work performed and is not an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, qualifications, or working conditions associated with the position. We reserve the right to modify this job description as business needs change.