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Energetic Materials Expert for Redteaming
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About the Role
Mercor is assembling a panel of explosives and energetic materials experts to red-team frontier AI models. The goal is to test whether a model can correctly judge the misuse potential of a technical request: Answering legitimate questions fully while refusing genuinely dangerous ones.
What You'll Do
- Write challenging single-turn prompts in your domain, labelled across three levels: benign, dual-use, and adversarial.
- Evaluate the responses that come back against a defined policy standard, and judge whether each was handled correctly.
- Write the reference answer; what a correct response looks like, and the technical reasoning for why.
- Models tend to fail this domain in both directions: refusing routine questions a mining engineer or investigator asks daily, then engaging with a request they should have shut down because it arrived in academic clothing. Knowing which is which takes someone who has done the work.
You're a Good Fit If You
- We're recruiting across two profiles and need both: chemists with specialty materials expertise, and engineers or operators with initiation and propulsion system experience. Prior AI evaluation or red-teaming experience is preferred. Relevant backgrounds include:
- Hazardous Device Specialist / Public Safety Professional — render-safe procedures and device assessment.
- Specialty Materials Chemist (pyrotechnics or propulsion) — formulation, synthesis and performance testing.
- Federal Certified Materials Specialist / Incident Analyst — forensic identification and scene analysis.
- Propulsion & Effects Engineer — munitions and propulsion system design.
- Commercial Blasting Engineer — specialty materials handling, storage and transport.
- What this role demands beyond technical depth
- This is writing-intensive work. Every judgment you make needs a written rationale that a non-specialist can follow. Prior technical writing, incident or post-blast reporting, published research, or expert witness experience is a strong signal; please include a sample or link.
Role Highlights
Pay & Payout
Independent contractor engagement. Apply via the link below - Mercor handles onboarding and pays weekly via Stripe or Wise.
Common Questions
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