Commercial Blasting Engineer

Mercor; India; Remote; INR 8,408,000 - 9,701,000; Part time

Benefits offered by this job

Referral reward: Earn up to $250 per 


Remote work

Job summary

Mercor is seeking a Commercial Blasting Engineer for a remote, contract position. You will craft challenging prompts in the blasting domain to test AI models and assess responses against policy standards, then create a reference answer with detailed reasoning.

Candidates bring licensed blasting expertise, regulatory knowledge, and strong technical writing skills to ensure accurate, well-justified evaluations of complex misuse scenarios.

Qualifications

• Licensed blasting engineer with regulatory compliance experience.
• Experience identifying misuse scenarios in technical domains.
• Proven ability to write clear, justified prompts and rationales.

Responsibilities

• Write challenging prompts for frontier AI red-teaming in your field.
• Evaluate model responses against a defined policy standard.
• Develop reference answers and technical reasoning for them.

Skills

Licensed blasting engineer

Blast design

Vibration control

Magazine management

Regulatory compliance

Technical writing

Red-teaming

Education

Licensed blasting engineer certification

Job description

Commercial Blasting Engineer

Company: Mercor

Compensation: $65-$75 per task

Commitment: Contract

Location: Remote

Referral Reward: Earn up to $250 per successful referral.

Referral Link: https://t.mercor.com/gLklC

About the work

Mercor is assembling a panel of energetic materials and propulsion 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 design that breaks rock for a highway cut is a description of directed energy release; the same magazine and transport rules that keep a crew safe are a map of where material sits and how it moves. A model that refuses a routine vibration-compliance 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 licensed practitioners who handle, store and move specialty materials as a daily responsibility, and who sign for them. What matters most is being able to tell a routine professional question from one that’s fishing for something else: the same inventory and transport detail that satisfies an auditor is what a diversion would exploit. 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)

• Licensed blaster or blasting engineer — mining, quarrying, construction or demolition
• Blast design and vibration control — timing, burden, seismograph monitoring, regulatory limits
• Magazine management, inventory reconciliation and transport of specialty materials
• Storage compatibility, security and regulatory compliance for a commercial licensee
• Training, certification or auditing of blasting crews

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 pre-publication 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.

We consider all qualified applicants without regard to legally protected characteristics and provide reasonable accommodations upon request.