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Specialty Materials Chemist — Pyrotechnics or Propulsion
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About the Role
Mercor is assembling a panel of energetic materials and propulsion 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.
- This domain lives on the dual-use line more than most. The same formulation work that qualifies a propellant or a display composition sits next to something nobody should be helped with; the same sensitivity data that protects a production line reads as a specification from the other side. A model that refuses a routine thermal-stability question is failing as badly as one that answers a question it shouldn't. Drawing that line reliably is why we need practitioners rather than generalists.
You're a Good Fit If You
- This is the chemistry half of the domain: we're looking for people who have formulated, synthesised and tested specialty energetic materials in a licensed or government facility, not modelled them from a distance. What matters most is being able to tell a routine professional question from one that's fishing for something else: the same sensitivity result that sets a safe handling limit is what someone else would want to design around. You will be writing prompts that sit exactly on that line, then judging whether the model held it.
- Examples of relevant backgrounds (ideally with red-teaming experience):
- Formulation chemist for pyrotechnics, propellants or specialty energetic materials
- Synthesis and characterisation of energetic compounds in a licensed or government facility
- Performance and sensitivity testing — calorimetry, thermal stability, small-scale safety testing
- Scale-up and process safety for energetic material production
- Solid or liquid rocket propellant development — binders, oxidisers, burn-rate modifiers
- What this role demands beyond technical depth
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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