Certified Explosives Specialist & Incident Analyst

Mercor; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

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 prompts, evaluate the responses, and draft a reference answer with technical reasoning. This work sits on the line between safety and technical depth, requiring meticulous writing and clear

Qualifications

• Federally certified explosives specialist or national equivalent — scene and materials analysis
• Forensic laboratory identification of energetic materials and post-blast residues
• Post-incident analysis and reporting for an agency or laboratory
• Regulatory inspection of licensees and permittees — storage, records and diversion indicators
• Expert testimony or casework on energetic materials

Responsibilities

• 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.

Job description

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 prompts, evaluate the responses, and draft a reference answer with technical reasoning. This work sits on the line between safety and technical depth, requiring meticulous writing and clear