Engineering Simulation Specialist - PhD

Mercor; New York (NY); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Mercor in New York seeks a senior researcher with deep expertise in control systems, analog/RF circuits, power electronics, or mechanical design to lead a frontier engineering-reasoning evaluation with an AI research lab. The role involves defining simulations, specs, and prompts, and guiding the model to generate designs that satisfy every specification.

You will assess the model's internal reasoning on your tasks, using an agentic grader to score spec satisfaction and ensure rigorous

Qualifications

• PhD or equivalent track record in a relevant field.
• Experience writing simulations in Python.
• Ability to define specs and quantitative thresholds.

Responsibilities

• Write simulations and specification sheets for model evaluation.
• Define pass/fail thresholds and prompts for the model.
• Evaluate artifacts designed by the model against specs.

Skills

Control systems

Analog/rf circuits

Power electronics

Mechanical design

Education

PhD or equivalent industry track record

Tools

Python

GitHub

Job description

About the role

A frontier engineering-reasoning evaluation run in collaboration with a leading AI research lab. The work measures whether state-of-the‑art models can reason from first principles in your engineering domain rather than retrieve facts from training data — and you get visibility into the model's internal reasoning on your own tasks.

What you'll do

Domain experts write simulations and specification sheets; the model attempts to design an artifact — controller gains, circuit parameters, geometry — that satisfies every spec.

You define the simulation, a set of specs with pass/fail thresholds, and the prompt. The model probes your simulation with a limited number of calls, then submits a final design. An agentic grader runs the simulation and scores spec satisfaction.

Who we're looking for

• Deep applied expertise in control systems, analog or RF circuits, power electronics, or mechanical design — PhD or equivalent industry track record.
• Comfortable writing simulations in Python and expressing acceptance criteria as quantitative, testable thresholds.
• Able to design a problem you can't shortcut yourself, but can still judge rigorously.
• Comfortable working in a browser-based studio and GitHub.

Support

Onboarding calls run daily, alongside internal tooling built to help you work faster. Prior model-evaluation experience is not required.