Engineering Simulation Specialist - PhD

Obsidian; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Obsidian in New York seeks a senior engineer to advance a frontier engineering-reasoning evaluation project with an AI research lab. You will define simulations, thresholds, and prompts while guiding a model to design artifacts that meet strict specs.

You’ll work in a browser-based studio, collaborate via GitHub, and push the boundaries of model reasoning in engineering domains.

Qualifications

• Deep applied expertise in control systems, analog or RF circuits, power electronics, or mechanical design.
• Comfortable writing simulations in Python and expressing acceptance criteria as quantitative thresholds.
• Able to design a problem you can't shortcut yourself, but can still judge rigorously.

Responsibilities

• Domain experts write simulations and specification sheets; the model attempts to design an artifact that satisfies every spec.
• You define the simulation, a set of specs with pass/fail thresholds, and the prompt.
• The model probes your simulation and submits a final design; an agentic grader scores spec satisfaction.

Skills

Control systems

Analog/RF circuits

Power electronics

Mechanical design

Education

PhD in Engineering / Controls / related field

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.