[Hiring] Expert: Mechanical Engineering @Patronus AI, Inc.

Role Description

You'll work with our research team on two things:

• Helping us understand how work in your area is actually done.
• 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.

Areas we're hiring for

• Mechanical design and structural analysis:
  • Design and stress engineers who turn requirements into parts, assemblies, and mechanisms governed by stress, deflection, fatigue, and motion.
  • Typical titles: Mechanical Design Engineer, Product Design Engineer, Mechanical Engineer, Stress Analyst, FEA Engineer, Structural Analyst.
• Thermal and fluid systems:
  • Thermal and fluids engineers who size and specify systems governed by heat transfer and flow.
  • Typical titles: HVAC Engineer, Building Mechanical Engineer, Thermal Engineer, Fluids Engineer, CFD Engineer, Piping Engineer.
• Manufacturing processes and tooling:
  • Manufacturing engineers who decide how mechanical parts are made.
  • Typical titles: Manufacturing Engineer, Tooling Engineer, Tool and Die Designer, Mold Designer, Additive Manufacturing Engineer, Process Development Engineer.

What you'll do

• 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 where things go wrong.
• Review the scenarios and documents our team builds from that research, and flag anything a practitioner would find unrealistic.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of hands-on experience in at least one of the areas above, as a mechanical design or stress engineer, a thermal, fluids or HVAC engineer, or a manufacturing or tooling engineer.
• Working command of the standards, methods, and codes in your area.
• Strong calculation and spreadsheet skills and the habit of checking every unit, assumption, and load case.
• Clear, precise writing in professional English.
• Ability to work independently and asynchronously against deadlines.

Nice to have

• Prior experience writing or reviewing AI evaluation tasks, exam questions, case studies, or training material.
• Familiarity with how AI models fail.

Our standards

• All tasks, documents, and solutions are human-authored. LLM-generated content is not permitted.
• Tasks and solutions must be original. Nothing may be copied from published or easily searchable sources.
• Never use real employer, client, or supplier data, drawings or designs, or anything covered by an NDA or export control. All products, companies, and scenarios are fictional.
• Quality is judged on accuracy, rubric validity, difficulty, and reviewer agreement, not volume.

How hiring works

• Short AI interview and resume review.
• One paid trial task, scored against a fixed quality checklist.
• Onboarding and your first project.

Patronus AI is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity in our workplace, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or other legally protected characteristics.