$70-$180/hr chemistry and materials science work, on your schedule
You review AI-drafted syntheses, mechanisms, and analyses the way you would a route before running it, flagging the step that will not proceed and the hazard a model ignores. Remote, a few hours a week, paid hourly.
Trusted by top research companies
Hi, we're Zac and Jack, the founders of Terac. We want to talk to you directly, because you are the most important part of what we're building.
Terac is a community of experts. People who have spent years getting good at something specific and hard. The world is about to need more of you, not less. As AI takes on more of the world's work, the bottleneck shifts to the people who actually know what they're talking about.
Expert labor is the rarest resource in the world right now, and it is shockingly hard to find. The companies that need a chemist's eye on a synthesis route that won't work spend weeks chasing people, paying placement fees, and settling for whoever is available. Meanwhile thousands of qualified people are sitting with knowledge that no one ever asks for.
That gap is what we're here to close. Every project that lands on Terac is routed to the people who actually know the answer, on their schedule, paid fairly, and only when the work is verified. No middleman taking a cut of your time. No vague gigs. No chasing checks.
We care about every single person in this community. If you join Terac, you're not a row in a database to us. We read the feedback. We answer the emails. We will fight for you when a customer is being unreasonable, and we will be honest with you when something on our side is broken. The quality of this panel is our entire company, and we owe you a serious bar.
If you've made it this far, here is what we're asking: claim your profile. Put your expertise on the record. Let the world's most ambitious teams come find you for the work only you can do.
Chemistry questions
Still curious? Write to us at support@terac.com.
Niche sub-specialties are often the most valuable, because models struggle most with expert reasoning in narrow domains where training data is sparse. Whether your background is ligand design, density functional theory, polymer rheology, or asymmetric catalysis, the work is judging how well a model reasons in that corner, not covering chemistry broadly.
Yes. Regulatory and safety credentials qualify for tasks on chemical handling, EHS compliance, GHS labeling, or OSHA Process Safety Management. The credential that matters is the one that makes you a domain authority on the output you evaluate, so a CCHO is right for reviewing a model's safety data sheet or chemical hygiene plan text.
Terac does not assign tasks that generate or validate novel routes for controlled precursors, select agents, or materials with clear weapons applications. If a task touches a sensitive area, you can decline it without penalty, and the platform will not ask you to override your judgment about what is appropriate to engage with.
Typically: annotating a model's mechanistic explanations for accuracy, scoring its spectral interpretations (NMR, IR, mass spec) against correct reasoning, writing worked examples of retrosynthetic analysis or kinetic derivations, and flagging errors in its answers on reaction conditions, stoichiometry, or thermodynamic feasibility. It draws on the technical judgment you use daily, not writing skills.
Yes. Tasks are built around publicly documented chemistry, standard literature methods, and general domain knowledge, so you are never asked to reproduce or validate anything from a proprietary system or trade-secret process. Your value is your trained judgment on how AI reasons about chemistry, which you hold independent of any employer.
Why your expertise matters
Today's chemistry AI assigns stereochemistry wrong, proposes a plausible-but-wrong retrosynthetic disconnection, and misreads an NMR splitting pattern. Those errors are invisible to a generalist but obvious to anyone who has spent time at the bench. Your corrections turn a fluent-sounding output into something actually chemically valid, the judgment labs cannot generate.
How pay works
Pay within the $70-$180 band scales with depth. A synthetic organic chemist who judges route feasibility or reads 2D NMR, plus PhDs or industry veterans with GMP experience, land at the top. Work is fully remote, billed by the verified hour or task, and paid once your submission is confirmed.
What the work looks like
A sample of the chemistry and materials science work you would pick up. Every project is scoped, remote, and paid on verified completion.
- Review a model's synthetic route and flag steps where the reagents cause competing reactions, selectivity failures, or unflagged hazards.
- Check a model's predicted NMR against a proposed structure and annotate where shift assignments or coupling constants do not fit.
- Write a worked retrosynthetic disconnection for a polycyclic natural product, showing the reasoning behind each strategic bond.
- Assess a model's reaction-mechanism answer for correct electron-pushing arrows, intermediate stability, and stereochemical outcome.
- Label a model's SDS summaries, flagging where hazard classifications break GHS criteria or exposure limits are cited wrong.
- Build comparative scenarios, such as Mitsunobu versus Appel for a substrate, that test whether a model predicts chemoselectivity correctly.
Specialties we match
Chemistry projects span a wide range of focus areas. Tell us where you go deep and we route the work that fits.
- Synthetic organic chemistry
- NMR spectroscopy interpretation
- Retrosynthetic analysis
- Computational chemistry (DFT/MM)
- Medicinal chemistry / SAR
- Analytical chemistry (HPLC, LC-MS, GC-MS)
- Process chemistry and scale-up
- Green chemistry and solvent selection
- Polymer and materials chemistry
- Regulatory chemistry (ICH, EPA, REACH)
- Electrochemistry and battery materials
- Biochemistry and enzyme kinetics
