Expert: Mechanical Engineering Remote

Patronus AI is a frontier lab developing simulation research and infrastructure to accelerate progress toward human-aligned AGI. We are on a mission to simulate all of the world's intelligence. We are the team behind some of the earliest and most influential research in AI evaluation like Finance Bench, Lynx, Simple Safety Tests , Copyright Catcher, Humanity's Last Exam, and more. We are formerly AI researchers and engineers from companies like Meta AI, Amazon AGI, and Google.

Our customers include foundation model labs and Fortune 500 enterprises like Adobe. We are backed by top-tier investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners, Notable Capital, Stanford University, Noam Brown, Gokul Rajaram, and more.

Independent contractor, fully remote, asynchronous

$50 to $150 per hour. Some projects pay per task instead: you are paid when the full task is submitted, with a bonus for each accepted task. Strong performers move up within that range or onto productivity-based pay. The trial task is paid.

10 or more hours per week

Rolling

Remote

You'll work with our research team on two things. The first is helping us understand how work in your area is actually done. The second is designing realistic mechanical engineering tasks that a qualified professional could solve with the right knowledge and tools, and that today's AI models get wrong. Each task starts from a scenario we provide. You create the working documents someone in your role would handle, write the request, solve it yourself and define how the answer is graded.

Your work becomes evaluation and training data for frontier models. You don't need an AI background. You do need to be the kind of mechanical engineer who checks the load case before trusting the safety factor.

Design and stress engineers who turn requirements into parts, assemblies and mechanisms governed by stress, deflection, fatigue and motion. They own machine elements, GD&T and tolerancing, hand calculations and FEA, drawings and bills of materials, and the structural and vibration tests that prove them. If heat or flow governs the sizing, the work belongs to thermal and fluid systems.

• Mechanical Design Engineer
• Product Design Engineer
• Mechanical Engineer
• Stress Analyst
• FEA Engineer
• Structural Analyst

Thermal and fluids engineers who size and specify systems governed by heat transfer and flow: HVAC and building mechanical systems, thermal management for electronics and batteries, piping, pumps and heat exchangers, and turbo machinery. They own load and flow calculations, equipment selection, CFD and the thermal and flow tests that prove them. The structure that carries the system belongs to design.

• HVAC Engineer
• Building Mechanical Engineer
• Thermal Engineer
• Fluids Engineer
• CFD Engineer
• Piping Engineer

Manufacturing engineers who decide how mechanical parts are made: process selection, design for manufacturing and assembly, tooling, fixtures, molds and dies, materials selection and heat treatment, additive manufacturing and process capability. Whether a part can be made belongs here. Whether it should be designed differently belongs to design. Chemical process engineering and production line optimization are not included.

• Manufacturing Engineer
• Tooling Engineer
• Tool and Die Designer
• Mold Designer
• Additive Manufacturing Engineer
• Process Development Engineer

Build realistic evidence files from a provided scenario, such as drawings and CAD models, bills of materials, hand calculations and simulation reports, load calculations and equipment schedules, process sheets and tooling drawings, and test reports. Write task requests that state the deliverable and say how uncertainty and justified assumptions should be handled. Solve each task end to end and document a reference solution with the reasoning behind every step.

Write scoring criteria precise enough that two independent graders reach the same verdict, including acceptable alternative answers and tolerances on numerical results. Check your own and your peers' tasks for technical accuracy and ambiguity. Work in reviewer feedback within agreed turnaround times, and flag guideline gaps or edge cases you run into. Explain to our research team how work in your area is actually done: the steps, the documents, who does what, and…