Engineering PhD - Benchmark Specialist

Mercor; Mumbai; On-site; INR 500,000 - 1,000,000; Part time

Job summary

Mercor seeks expert engineers to author and review high-quality academic assessment content for an AI research initiative. You will write and verify rigorous MCQs across core engineering domains, evaluate solution quality, and help establish benchmarks used to advance AI capabilities.

Roles include Question Authoring or Question Verification, with emphasis on accuracy, clarity, and self-contained problems. Remote, asynchronous collaboration is expected, with 10+ hours weekly commitment.

Qualifications

• PhD or doctoral candidate in Engineering or closely related field.
• Master's degree considered for candidates with exceptional depth in a subdomain.
• Professional engineering licensure (PE) or industry experience is a strong plus.
• Excellent written English and ability to express complex ideas clearly and concisely.

Responsibilities

• Author original engineering questions that test deep conceptual understanding.
• Ensure questions are unambiguous, self-contained, and precisely defined.
• Rate each question's difficulty: Medium, Hard, or Expert.
• Provide 1 correct answer and 9 plausible but subtly incorrect alternatives.
• Write step-by-step Chain-of-Thought solutions with clear intermediate steps in markdown format.
• Supply 1–5 academic references per question from reputable sources.
• For verification tasks: flag issues with clarity, completeness, precision, or solvability and justify edits.

Skills

Academic writing

English proficiency

Attention to detail

Education

PhD or doctoral candidate

Job description

Role Overview

We are seeking expert engineers to author and review high-quality academic assessment content for an AI research initiative. You will write and verify rigorous multiple-choice questions across core engineering domains, evaluate solution quality, and help establish gold-standard benchmarks used to advance AI capabilities.

You will be assigned one of two task types:

• Question Authoring — Create original, challenging multiple-choice questions in your area of engineering expertise, rate their difficulty, and submit them for review.

• Question Verification — Review pre-written questions for accuracy, clarity, and rigor. Edit where needed, rate difficulty, and document any changes made.

Engineering Domains Covered

Semiconductor Design & Manufacturing (VLSI), Control Science and Engineering, Mechatronics, Reactor, Plant Design & Separations, Reservoir Engineering & Maintenance, Bioinstrumentation & Biotechnology.

Key Responsibilities

• Author original engineering questions that test deep conceptual understanding, not surface-level recall
• Ensure questions are unambiguous, self-contained, and precisely defined — all necessary information must be in the problem statement
• Rate each question's difficulty: Medium (intro undergraduate), Hard (advanced undergraduate), or Expert (post-graduate and above)
• Provide 1 correct answer and 9 plausible but subtly incorrect alternatives that challenge expert-level solvers
• Write step-by-step Chain-of-Thought solutions with clear, concise intermediate steps in markdown format
• Supply 1–5 academic references per question from reputable sources (peer-reviewed journals, university repositories)
• For verification tasks: flag issues with clarity, completeness, precision, or solvability and justify any edits made

Ideal Qualifications

• PhD or doctoral candidate in Engineering or a closely related field
• Master's degree considered for candidates with exceptional depth in a specific subdomain
• Strong command of graduate-level engineering principles, applied mathematics, and domain-specific standards
• Professional engineering licensure (PE) or industry experience is a strong plus
• Excellent written English and ability to express complex ideas clearly and concisely

More About the Opportunity

• Expected commitment: 10+ hours/week
• Asynchronous, fully remote work