Energetic Materials Chemist - Specialist

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

Job summary

Obsidian is seeking a chemist with a background in energetic materials to join a high-sensitivity project. You will design prompts across benign, dual-use, and adversarial categories and evaluate model responses against a defined policy standard.

You will also draft reference answers with clear technical reasoning, while navigating safety constraints and regulatory considerations in a licensed or government-facility context.

Qualifications

• Background formulating, synthesising and testing specialty energetic materials in a licensed or government facility.
• Ability to distinguish routine professional questions from risky inquiries and provide clear rationale.

Responsibilities

• Write challenging prompts across benign, dual-use and adversarial levels.
• Evaluate model responses against a policy standard and judge handling quality.
• Write the reference answer with technical reasoning for safe, correct responses.

Skills

Formulation chemist

Synthesis & characterization

Safety testing

Scale-up & process safety

Red-teaming experience

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.

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 formulation work that qualifies a propellant or a display composition sits next to something nobody should be helped with; the same sensitivity data that protects a production line reads as a specification from the other side. A model that refuses a routine thermal-stability 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

This is the chemistry half of the domain: we're looking for people who have formulated, synthesised and tested specialty energetic materials in a licensed or government facility, not modelled them from a distance. What matters most is being able to tell a routine professional question from one that's fishing for something else: the same sensitivity result that sets a safe handling limit is what someone else would want to design around. 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):

• Formulation chemist for pyrotechnics, propellants or specialty energetic materials
• Synthesis and characterisation of energetic compounds in a licensed or government facility
• Performance and sensitivity testing — calorimetry, thermal stability, small-scale safety testing
• Scale-up and process safety for energetic material production
• Solid or liquid rocket propellant development — binders, oxidisers, burn-rate modifiers

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 prepublication 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.