RF Circuit Design Expert - PhD

Mercor; Berlin; Vor Ort; EUR 55.000 - 83.000; Teilzeit

Zusammenfassung

Mercor is seeking an Electrical Engineering & RF/Circuit Design Expert to help build a large-scale benchmark that tests AI systems on real scientific workflows. You will author graduate-level problems based on RF/circuit design tasks and validate them against cutting-edge models.

You'll design problems requiring use of scikit-rf or ngspice, write Python problem setups, and interpret measurement data to recover circuit parameters. This role is part-time in Berlin, with 15–20 hours per week.

Qualifikationen

• Graduate-level training in a relevant STEM field.
• Proficiency with at least one listed scientific software library, shown via publications or projects.
• Strong Python skills for problem setups and validators.
• Ability to work independently and refine designs with feedback.
• Comfortable working in Linux/terminal environments and remote compute sandboxes.
• Available for 15–20 hours per week.

Aufgaben

• Create graduate-level problems using RF/Circuit design tools.
• Test problems against AI models and refine to target difficulty.
• Design problems requiring analysis of partial results and planned experiments.
• Recover circuit parameters from measurement data.

Kenntnisse

Problem design

Strategic thinking

Independent work

Technical communication

Ausbildung

Master's or PhD in STEM

Tools

scikit-rf

ngspice

Python

Jobbeschreibung

Electrical Engineering & RF/Circuit Design Expert

About the Project

We're building a large-scale benchmark to test how well advanced AI systems can solve hard scientific and engineering problems. As a task designer, you'll create challenging computational problems that check whether AI can use real scientific software to do research-level work — running simulations, interpreting results, designing experiments, and uncovering hidden information from data.

This isn't a typical data-labeling job. You'll design original, graduate-level problems based on real scientific workflows, test them against cutting-edge AI models, and fine-tune them until the difficulty is just right.

What You'll Do

You'll create problems that require skilled use of specialized scientific software. Some will ask the AI to compute exact answers from a fully defined setup — testing whether it can correctly carry out complex, multi-step workflows. Others will be harder: the AI must plan a series of queries or experiments to uncover information that isn't directly visible, which means thinking strategically about what to measure, how to read partial results, and how to narrow down the possibilities efficiently.

Each problem goes through a testing loop against state-of-the-art AI models, and you'll refine it until it hits the target difficulty.

Domains & Tools We're Hiring For

We're especially interested in experts with deep, hands-on experience in:

Electrical Engineering & RF/Circuit Design

working with scikit-rf for RF and microwave network analysis, S-parameter characterization, and transmission-line modeling, or ngspice for circuit simulation, operating point analysis, and frequency response characterization. Candidates should be comfortable designing problems that involve recovering circuit parameters from measurement data.

Experience with other specialized software in this domain will also be considered.

What Makes a Strong Candidate

You have graduate-level expertise (MS or PhD preferred) in the domain above, with real hands‑on experience using these tools — not just theoretical knowledge. You've written code using these libraries to solve actual research problems, and you understand where they break, what their edge cases are, and what makes a problem genuinely hard rather than just complicated.

Beyond domain expertise, the best candidates think like puzzle designers: building problems where the challenge comes from smart reasoning rather than raw computation, where several approaches seem plausible but only careful analysis reveals the right one, and where surface‑level pattern matching won't get you to the answer.

Requirements

• Graduate-level training in a relevant STEM field (MS, PhD, or equivalent research experience)

• Proven proficiency with at least one of the listed scientific software libraries, shown through research publications, open-source contributions, or professional work
• Strong Python skills — you'll be writing problem setups, oracle functions, and solution validators
• Ability to work independently and refine problem designs based on feedback
• Comfortable working in a Linux/terminal environment with remote compute sandboxes
• Available for at least 15–20 hours per week

Nice to Have

• Experience across multiple listed domains or tools
• Familiarity with benchmark or evaluation design
• Background in scientific teaching or exam/problem-set design
• Experience with computational reproducibility and containerized environments