Role Description & Scope
Executive Role Brief & Verified Partner Routing
Shape the reasoning reliability of frontier language models through this verified independent contractor engagement. Contractors earn $60–$125/hr with guaranteed weekly payouts and priority access to bonus calibration batches. Contributors in the Research Technical Program Manager role leverage RLHF & LLM Rubric Evaluation to benchmark model performance across high-difficulty domain scenarios. Enjoy frictionless remote execution with asynchronous rubric queues, zero commute, and flexible part-time or full-time bandwidth. Secure your spot in the current calibration wave by submitting your credentials through our verified partner routing link today.
- 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-7f03dc4a-748 for priority partner queue placement.
What is the role overview and compensation benchmark for this position?
This Research Technical Program Manager position is a verified remote AI evaluation and domain training contract within the Machine Learning & AI 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 machine learning & ai evaluators averages $115/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 Research Technical Program Manager 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 Machine Learning, LLM. 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
Your job is to make ambitious research programs move. You will own the execution of programs spanning post-training, enterprise post-training, fellowships, evaluation releases, and partner research. You will turn open-ended research goals into clear plans, keep researchers, engineers, SPLs and external partners aligned, and surface the decisions and blockers that matter. This is not a traditional project-management role. You must understand the technical work well enough to reason about experiments, datasets, evaluations, training pipelines, and research tradeoffs. Your impact will come from creating just enough structure for the team to run more programs, make better decisions, and ship high-quality work faster.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Own planning and execution across post-training, enterprise post-training, fellowship, and public evaluation programs.
- Translate ambiguous research objectives into milestones, owners, dependencies, success criteria, and decision points.
- Maintain a trustworthy view of program health, including experiment progress, risks, blockers, partner dependencies, and upcoming releases.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
- 2-4 years project/program management experience
- Experience leading complex technical programs across research, machine learning, engineering, or data organizations
- Working knowledge of the LLM development lifecycle, including data creation, SFT, RL-based post-training, and evaluation
- Strong communication and an ability to turn messy technical information into clear decisions and next steps
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.