Nuclear Engineering & Safeguards Experts for Red Team

What you'll do

This is the general intake for Mercor's nuclear red-team panel, and it is the busiest of the four domain umbrella listings, with 21 hires this month. It covers five profiles that Mercor also advertises separately. The panel tests whether frontier AI models judge the misuse potential of nuclear questions correctly: answering the legitimate ones fully and refusing the genuinely dangerous ones.

This ad describes the adversarial side of the job more directly than the role listings do. The task is to write prompts that try to pull a model past the boundary (the plausible research framing, the question that looks academic until you know what it is really asking for), then explain in writing why the model's response was or was not acceptable.

Each task:

1. Write a single-turn prompt from your specialty, labelled benign, dual-use or adversarial
2. Judge the model's reply against a defined policy standard
3. Write the reference answer, with the technical reasoning behind it

Who fits

Mercor states the core profile plainly: fuel-cycle depth plus some exposure to how material is controlled, accounted for or diverted, with safeguards and nonproliferation experience the strongest signal. The named backgrounds:

• Safeguards analyst or IAEA/Euratom inspector
• Fuel-cycle nuclear engineer
• Nuclear security engineer at a national laboratory
• Nuclear forensics scientist (this ad adds radioxenon monitoring to the forensics profile)
• Nonproliferation analyst (this ad adds NSG trigger lists and smuggling pathways)

Red-teaming experience is preferred. Writing is central; include a sample or link to technical writing, published research or expert witness work.

Which listing to apply through

The ad does not say whether this listing shares a pool with the five role listings. Candidates who combine fuel-cycle and safeguards experience, the profile Mercor describes as ideal, may find this general listing the more natural fit; a clean match to one role is probably better signalled through that listing. Pay and terms are identical.

What it pays

$65–75 per task, Mercor's published figure, the same as each role listing and every other domain red-team panel. Task length is not stated.

No payment schedule or visa eligibility is published on this listing.

Before you apply

No classified or export-controlled information, and nothing under NDA or prepublication review. In this field that covers a great deal; declare your obligations and Mercor says it will scope the work accordingly.

Mercor briefs experts before sustained work on misuse scenarios and lets you pause or step away without penalty.

Worth knowing

Good:

• Most active of Mercor's domain red-team umbrellas, with 21 hires this month
• Clear statement of the ideal profile
• No country restriction published

Less good:

• Unclear how this listing relates to the role-specific ones
• Per-task pay with no stated task length
• Payment terms not on the listing

About this listing

Posted by Mercor as a remote contract, confirmed open on 24 September 2026. The role-specific nuclear listings: Safeguards Analyst / IAEA or Euratom Inspector, Nuclear Engineer, Fuel Cycle, Nuclear Security Engineer, Forensic Scientist: Nuclear Materials and Nonproliferation Analyst. See Mercor.