Radiological Safety Expert - Redteaming

Obsidian; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Mercor is assembling a panel of radiological safety experts to red-team frontier AI models. The work centers on writing challenging, domain-specific prompts across benign, dual-use, and adversarial levels, and evaluating model responses against a defined policy standard.

You will document judgments with clear rationales for non-specialists, read and write about misuse scenarios, and contribute reference answers with technical reasoning.

Qualifications

• Experience in radiological safety or related regulatory areas.
• Strong written communication and ability to justify technical judgments for non-specialists.

Responsibilities

• Write challenging prompts across benign, dual-use, and adversarial levels.
• Evaluate model responses against a policy standard.
• Draft reference answers and the technical reasoning behind them.

Job description

About the work

Mercor is assembling a panel of radiological safety 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 while 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 isotope underpins cancer therapy and industrial radiography; the same shielding calculation protects a worker and conceals a source. A model that refuses a routine dose 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 people who have held responsibility for radioactive material, not just worked near it; source custody, licensing, or the security and response side. What matters most is being able to tell a routine professional question from one that's fishing for something else: the same shielding calculation protects a worker and conceals a source, They will be writing prompts that sit exactly on that line, then judging whether the model held it. Examples of relevant backgrounds (Ideally w/Red-teaming experience):Radiation Safety Officer (broad-scope licensee) - holds the licence of record; acquisition, inventory, transfer and disposal.Health Physicist (DOE site or national lab) - survey, assay, contamination control and dose planning in high-hazard facilities.Source Security / Vulnerability Assessment Specialist - has assessed how Category 1 and 2 sources get stolen, shielded or moved.Radiological Emergency Response Specialist - FRMAC, CBRN response, dispersal and contamination modelling.Nuclear Medicine Physicist / Cyclotron RSO - medical isotope production and handling; the legitimate-use half of the dual-use line.

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.