Mechanical Engineering Expert

Pay: $70 – $125/hour
Commitment: Part time, ~40 h/week
Field: Other Engineering

The research teams behind the best-known AI models come to Mercor for mechanical engineering judgment they can't generate on their own. Your standards and expertise become the rubric that frontier AI is graded against.

This is a standing listing for mechanical engineers who want AI training and evaluation work, not a specific job opening. It stays open whether or not a matching project is running this week.

New projects start on short notice, so instead of posting and pulling a listing each time, we keep one open per field and draw from it when one begins.

What the work looks like

We match mechanical engineers in the network to projects like:

• Writing a design problem from work you have done, with the loads, the constraints, and the tolerances, plus the reference answer a model's attempt gets graded against
• Grading model-written analysis: whether the free body diagram is right, whether the failure mode considered is the governing one, whether the safety factor is applied to the right quantity
• Flagging where a model's design satisfies the calculation and fails in practice, given manufacturability, assembly, wear, or thermal expansion

Past rates have run $70 to $125 an hour, set per project by scope and depth.

What we're looking for

• A degree in mechanical engineering, with professional design or analysis experience
• Clear written communication, since most of the work involves explaining your reasoning
• Comfort with ambiguous tasks, and willingness to flag unclear instructions

Where you trained matters less than whether you have had a design of yours built, and learned what it did once it was.

How it works

Apply here with your resume and confirm where you work from, then take a short AI interview, about 20 minutes total.

We verify your background and add you to the mechanical engineering pool.

When a project needs mechanical engineering expertise, we invite matching people from the pool to that specific listing. It names the rate, the hours, and the client, and any hiring decision is made there.

What to expect

This listing does not accept or reject candidates, so you will not get a decision on it. We reach out when a project matches your background. Depending on what our clients are running, that can be within a week or several months.

Finishing the domain expert interview and joining every network you qualify for both improve your odds of being matched. You only need to sign up once to be eligible across all of them.