Network Engineering & Simulation Expert — Hephaestus

Pay: $70 – $90/hour
Commitment: Hourly, ~40 h/week

Role Overview

Mercor is seeking experienced network engineers to build and validate technical tasks for AI systems working with enterprise, data-center, and service-provider networks.

The work focuses on executable network configurations, reproducible simulated or emulated topologies, troubleshooting, and measurable verification. Contributors create the network artifacts and reference solutions behind each task and test whether a proposed configuration produces the required behavior.

Key Responsibilities

• Design realistic tasks involving routing, switching, network services, segmentation, access policies, redundancy, or performance.
• Build reproducible network topologies and device configurations using relevant tools such as containerlab, GNS3, EVE-NG, Mininet, ns-3, FRRouting, or equivalent platforms.
• Configure and debug scenarios involving technologies such as BGP, OSPF, VLANs, IPv4/IPv6, DNS, DHCP, NAT, VPNs, or firewalls, within your area of expertise.
• Develop automated checks for reachability, route selection, policy enforcement, isolation, convergence, failover, latency, throughput, and packet loss. Use tests of live behavior alongside configuration inspection.
• Produce reference configurations, traffic or failure scenarios, and verification scripts; validate both successful and deliberately incorrect cases.
• Package topology files, configuration dependencies, scripts, packet captures, and results so another engineer can reproduce the outcome.
• Review AI-generated configurations and diagnose the cause of failures. Use coding agents to support automation while independently validating network behavior.

Ideal Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional network engineering experience, with direct ownership of enterprise, data-center, cloud, or service-provider networks.
• Strong hands-on routing, switching, troubleshooting, and network-policy skills.
• Experience building network labs, simulations, or emulations and analyzing traffic with tools such as Wireshark, tcpdump, or iperf. Familiarity with every listed platform is not required.
• Ability to write and debug Python, shell, Ansible, or comparable automation for repeatable setup and verification.
• Sound judgment about protocol behavior, failure modes, measurement limitations, and differences between simulated and production networks.
• Clear technical communication. Relevant certifications such as CCNP, CCIE, or JNCIP, and experience with network test automation, are a plus.

Compensation

• Writers: $70–$80/hour.
• Reviewers: $90/hour.