Hardware Engineer

DataAnnotation; United States; On-site; USD 55,000 - 172,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Weekly payouts

Remote work

Flexible hours

Job summary

DataAnnotation is seeking an experienced Hardware Engineer to evaluate how frontier AI models handle real electrical and electronics engineering work. You bring the judgment from years of designing, debugging, and shipping hardware; we provide problems the models cannot yet solve on their own.

You will design challenging problems, run them through frontier AI models, compare versions, and critique model-driven derivations with clear reasoning.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of circuit or electronics engineering experience.
• Strong ability to defend design tradeoffs and rationales.
• Experience articulating why answers are wrong, not just that they are.

Responsibilities

• Design realistic engineering problems from personal practice.
• Run problems through frontier AI models and judge against professional standards.
• Compare model versions and report where improvements are made.
• Critique model outputs with written reasoning and evidence.
• Flag failures with explicit issues and data.

Skills

Circuit analysis

Electrical engineering

English fluency

AI tools familiarity

Education

Bachelor’s degree in EE or related field

Tools

Circuit simulation software

PCB design tools

FPGA tooling

Job description

Pay: up to $40 – $125+ /hour (depends on task difficulty and specialization)

Location: Remote · Type: Independent contractor · Hours: Flexible hours · Payouts: Weekly

Overview

DataAnnotation is looking for an experienced Hardware Engineer to evaluate how frontier AI models handle real electrical and electronics engineering work. You bring the judgment you have already built over years of designing, debugging, and shipping hardware. We bring engineering problems the models cannot yet solve on their own.

This is a new and growing area for our company, focused on teaching AI to reason correctly about circuits, systems, and physical constraints. Your engineering judgment, your standard for what counts as a correct answer, and the written rationale behind them become the signal that shapes the next generation of engineering tools.

What you’ll actually do

• Design challenging, realistic engineering problems from your own practice: a circuit to specify, a control loop to stabilize, a power stage to size.
• Run those problems through frontier AI models and judge the output against your professional standard.
• Compare two model versions on identical prompts and call which performed better, and where each fell short.
• Critique model-generated derivations, schematics, component selections, and calculations, and write the reasoning behind your call.
• Flag concrete failures with evidence: wrong assumptions, sign and unit errors, unphysical results, invalid topologies, fabricated datasheet values, or off-brief interpretation.

Problems draw on whatever you know best:

• Analog, RF, and mixed-signal circuits.
• Electromagnetics and antennas.
• Control and systems.
• Devices and materials.
• Signal processing and photonics.
• Power and energy systems.

Roles this fits

Common backgrounds: Hardware Engineer, PCB Design Engineer, FPGA Engineer.

What we look for

• Fluency in English (native or bilingual level).
• 2+ years of industry experience in circuit or electronics engineering.
• Background in electrical engineering, electronics engineering, or a closely related discipline.
• Strong command of circuit analysis and design tradeoffs, and the ability to defend component-level and system-level decisions.
• The ability to articulate why an answer is wrong, not only that it is.
• Working comfort with AI tools, or the ability to pick them up quickly.
• A current, in-progress, or completed Bachelor’s is preferred but not required.
• Only applicants based in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, or the United States will be considered for this role.

Compensation

Up to $40 – $125+/hr depending on task difficulty and specialization. Many contributors add $10k–$100k+ a year; some make it their full-time income.

About DataAnnotation

DataAnnotation is where 100k+ experts train the world’s leading AI models. $150M+ paid to contributors to date, and the average contributor stays 5+ years. Flexible, remote, and always project-available.