Physics Expert (Professor / Principal Investigator)
Job Description
Role Title: Physics Expert (Professor / Principal Investigator)
Role Type: Contractor.
Location: Remote
Required Skills: Physics mastery, Expert judgment in ambiguous cases, Meta-level reasoning, Research leadership, Defensible written articulation
micro1 is engaging Physics Experts—established Professors or Principal Investigators—to provide high-level domain guidance as part of an impactful project for a customer. In this role, you'll apply your expertise to help train next-generation AI systems. Your work will shape how models learn, reason, and perform through high-quality, real-world input. No prior experience in AI is required — your domain knowledge is what matters.
Scope of Work
Adjudicate and render expert judgment on contested or competing physics arguments, solutions, or interpretations within your subfield.
Compare alternative approaches to the same problem, detailing which is superior, under what assumptions, and in which regimes.
Identify and articulate meta-level criteria for evaluating the robustness and validity of competing physics work, such as key assumptions and breaking points of approximations.
Exercise calibrated confidence by providing authoritative assessments while transparently acknowledging genuine uncertainty or open questions in the field.
Draft defensible written evaluations suitable for review by fellow senior physicists, ensuring clarity and rigor.
Leverage technical tools such as LaTeX, SymPy, Python, and Jupyter to verify or contrast technical claims as needed.
Clearly communicate when a question is unresolved within the field and delineate the pertinent considerations.
Preferred Qualifications
PhD in physics with demonstrated expertise and scholarly impact in your specified subfield.
Current or former Associate Professor, Full Professor, Chair Professor, or Principal Investigator/Group Leader with a track record of independent research leadership.
Ongoing research activity in one or more of these areas: High Energy Physics, Mathematical Physics, Biophysics, Statistical Physics, Condensed Matter, AMO/Quantum Optics, Gravitation, Cosmology, Astrophysics, Quantum Information, or Optical Properties of Materials.
3–5 recent representative publications in your target subfield, with arXiv or DOI references.
Prior experience supervising PhD students or postdocs, or equivalent leadership in industry research settings.
Proficiency with LaTeX, SymPy, Python, and Jupyter (please indicate any gaps in experience with these tools).
Exceptional written communication skills, with the ability to articulate nuanced and well-reasoned judgments.
About Micro1
Micro1 is building the essential infrastructure for the next generation of artificial intelligence, moving beyond the limitations of static datasets to create a dynamic ecosystem where models truly learn to think and act. At its core, the company understands that the path to frontier intelligence isn't paved with synthetic data alone; it requires the nuance, judgment, and contextual awareness that only expert human guidance can provide. By positioning itself at the intersection of human expertise and advanced reinforcement learning, Micro1 is tackling the hardest problem in AI today: teaching models not just to answer questions, but to reason through complexity and take meaningful actions in unpredictable, real-world environments.
This mission comes to life through Realm, Micro1's flagship training environment. Realm functions as a high-fidelity simulation ground where AI agents are immersed in scenarios that closely mirror the messiness of actual human workflows. Rather than relying on abstract benchmarks, Realm forces models to engage in agentic actions, multi-step decisions, digital navigation, coding, and problem-solving that require genuine comprehension. It is within these realistic sandboxes that world-class human data is generated, creating a continuous feedback loop where expert annotators observe, correct, and guide model behavior. This process does more than just fine-tune outputs; it fundamentally elevates a model's underlying reasoning architecture, ensuring that the intelligence developed in training holds up when deployed into the wild.
But training is only half the equation. Micro1 recognizes that the true test of an AI system lies in its production performance, which is where Cortex enters the picture. Cortex is a contextual evaluation platform designed to move beyond superficial accuracy metrics and provide a granular, real-time view of how agents behave in live settings. It doesn't just flag errors; it surfaces the underlying context behind failures, revealing why an agent struggled with a particular user intent or environmental variable. This insight is invaluable for engineering teams, as it transforms evaluation from a passive checkpoint into an active improvement tool. With Cortex, companies can catch degradation early, understand the nuances of edge cases, and feed those learnings directly back into Realm for retraining, creating a virtuous cycle of continuous advancement.
Ultimately, Micro1 is not merely a data lab or an evaluation tool it is a comprehensive intelligence engine that connects the entire lifecycle of model development. From the expert human feedback that sharpens raw capability, to the realistic RL environments that forge robust agentic behavior, to the contextual oversight that ensures reliability in production, Micro1 provides the integrated foundation that AI labs and enterprises desperately need. As the industry races toward truly autonomous systems, Micro1 stands as the critical bridge between laboratory breakthroughs and dependable, real-world impact, ensuring that frontier models do not just perform well on paper, but deliver genuine value in the complex, dynamic world they are meant to serve.