Commercial Blasting Engineer

Mercor; United States; Remote; USD 100,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Mercor seeks experts to assemble a panel for red-teaming frontier AI models. You will write categorized prompts, evaluate model responses, and craft reference answers with clear, accessible reasoning for non-specialists.

The role emphasizes sustained writing on misuse scenarios, with prior publication or expert witness experience as a strong signal. A licensed practitioner background is preferred and a strong ability to communicate complex ideas in writing is essential.

Qualifications

• Ability to distinguish routine professional questions from misuse signals.
• Experience communicating complex ideas to non-specialists through writing.
• Prior technical writing, publications, or expert witness work is a strong signal.

Responsibilities

• Compose challenging prompts across benign, dual-use, and adversarial levels.
• Evaluate model responses against policy standards and document findings.
• Create reference answers and technical reasoning for misuse scenarios.

Skills

Red-team mindset

Technical writing

Written rationale

Education

Blasting license/Certification

Tools

Inventory management

Regulatory compliance

Job description

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.

• 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.

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.