Engineering Simulation Specialist - PhD

Mercor; Greater London; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Mercor is seeking a researcher to lead frontier engineering‑reasoning evaluations. You will design simulations and specifications, and guide models to produce designs that satisfy all criteria.

The role emphasizes rigorous problem formulation and quantitative thresholds, in a browser‑based studio with GitHub collaboration. The successful candidate will have deep expertise in control systems or related domains, with a PhD or equivalent track record, and familiarity with Python simulations and

Qualifications

• Deep applied expertise in control systems, analog or RF circuits, power electronics, or mechanical design.
• PhD or equivalent industry track record.
• Comfortable writing simulations in Python and expressing acceptance criteria as quantitative thresholds.
• Able to design problems that are rigorous and non-trivial.

Responsibilities

• Define simulations and specs with pass/fail thresholds.
• Oversee model evaluation with an agentic grader.
• Collaborate in a browser‑based studio and GitHub.
• Onboarding and tooling support provided.

Skills

Control systems

Analog circuits

RF circuits

Power electronics

Mechanical design

Python

Simulations

GitHub

Browser-based studio

Education

PhD or equivalent

Tools

Python

GitHub

Job description

About the role

A frontier engineering-reasoning evaluation run in collaboration with a leading AI research lab. The work measures whether state-of-the‑art models can reason from first principles in your engineering domain rather than retrieve facts from training data — and you get visibility into the model's internal reasoning on your own tasks.

What you'll do

Domain experts write simulations and specification sheets; the model attempts to design an artifact — controller gains, circuit parameters, geometry — that satisfies every spec.

You define the simulation, a set of specs with pass/fail thresholds, and the prompt. The model probes your simulation with a limited number of calls, then submits a final design. An agentic grader runs the simulation and scores spec satisfaction.

Who we're looking for

• Deep applied expertise in control systems, analog or RF circuits, power electronics, or mechanical design — PhD or equivalent industry track record.
• Comfortable writing simulations in Python and expressing acceptance criteria as quantitative, testable thresholds.
• Able to design a problem you can't shortcut yourself, but can still judge rigorously.
• Comfortable working in a browser-based studio and GitHub.

Support

Onboarding calls run daily, alongside internal tooling built to help you work faster. Prior model-evaluation experience is not required.