Nuclear Security Engineer

What you'll do

Mercor is recruiting nuclear security engineers for its nuclear materials and safeguards red-team panel. Your field is keeping material where it belongs: accountancy, physical protection, and the assessments that test both. The panel checks whether frontier AI models help the people who run and audit those systems, and whether they refuse requests that would help someone defeat them. Refusing a routine material-accounting question is scored as a model failure.

Each task:

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

Security engineering is inherently adversarial thinking: vulnerability assessments exist to find the gaps before someone else does. That makes practitioners good at spotting when a question has turned from "how do we close this" to "where is it open". The work is making that judgment explicit and writing it down for reviewers who are not specialists.

Who fits

People who have been responsible for material control, protection or assessment. The ad names:

• MC&A programme design, operation or assessment at a national laboratory or licensee
• Physical protection system engineering and performance testing
• Vulnerability assessment and adversary path analysis for nuclear facilities
• Insider threat and human reliability programme work
• Nuclear security policy, training or international assistance programmes

Red-teaming experience is preferred, and people who have run performance tests or force-on-force exercises already think this way. Mercor asks for a writing sample or link.

What it pays

$65–75 per task, the same published band as the rest of the nuclear panel. No task length is given, so establish your own hourly equivalent from the first few tasks.

Payment schedule and visa eligibility are not published on this listing.

Before you apply

Much of this field is classified or controlled (security plans, assessment results, facility specifics). None of it may be used here, nor anything under NDA or prepublication review. You can still apply if you hold such obligations; declare them and Mercor says it will scope the work accordingly. Clear it with your security office if you are currently employed at a site.

You will read and write about misuse scenarios for sustained periods. Mercor briefs experts first and lets you pause or step away without penalty.

Worth knowing

Good:

• Uses adversarial security thinking in a new setting
• International assistance and training backgrounds are explicitly welcome
• No country restriction published

Less good:

• Most facility-specific knowledge is off limits
• Per-task pay with no stated task length
• Payment terms missing from the listing

About this listing

Posted by Mercor as a remote contract, confirmed open on 24 September 2026. The same panel is recruiting a Nonproliferation Analyst. See Mercor.