Radiation Safety Officer - Compliance Expert

Mercor; Toronto; On-site; CAD 120,000 - 165,000; Full time

Job summary

Mercor is assembling a panel of radiological safety experts to red-team frontier AI models, testing whether a model can judge misuse potential of technical requests. You will craft challenging prompts across benign, dual-use, and adversarial categories and write the reference answer with the technical reasoning.

Given the high-stakes domain, strong writing and clear rationales are essential; prior experience with licensing and compliance in radiation protection is highly valued, and you may be

Qualifications

• Candidates must demonstrate ability to write rationales that are accessible to non-specialists.
• Experience with licensing/regulatory concepts in radiation safety is strongly preferred.
• Proven ability to evaluate misuse scenarios and provide clear justification.

Responsibilities

• Write challenging prompts across benign, dual-use, and adversarial categories.
• Evaluate model responses against a defined policy standard.
• Create reference answers with technical reasoning for each scenario.

Skills

Red-team prompt writing

Technical writing

Radiological safety knowledge

Education

RSO Licence holder

Job description

About the work

Mercor is assembling a panel of radiological safety 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.

You will:

• 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 isotope underpins cancer therapy and industrial radiography; the same shielding calculation protects a worker and conceals a source. A model that refuses a routine dose 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.

Background we're looking for

We're looking for people who have held the licence, not just worked under it — the person of record for acquisition, inventory, transfer and disposal. What matters most is being able to tell a routine professional question from one that's fishing for something else: the same shielding calculation protects a worker and conceals a source. 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):

• Named RSO on a broad-scope licence — programme management, source inventory, regulatory compliance
• RSO or deputy RSO at a university, hospital or research institute running a mixed radionuclide and sealed‑source programme
• Industrial or irradiator RSO — Category 1 and 2 sealed sources, radiography, gauging, sterilisation
• Licensing and compliance specialist — NRC, Agreement State or national regulator submissions, amendments and inspections
• Radiation protection manager accountable for ALARA, audits, training and incident reporting across multiple authorised users

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, published research, or expert witness experience is a strong signal; please include a sample or link. You will also be reading and writing about misuse scenarios in your field for sustained periods. We brief experts on this in advance, and you can pause or step away at any point without penalty.

Before you apply

Your work here will not involve, and must not draw on, classified or export‑controlled information, or anything covered by an NDA or prepublication review obligation. If you hold such obligations you may still be a good fit; tell us in your application and we will scope the work accordingly.