Remote | Materials Science & Engineering Expert — $50–$80/hour

24-Mag • New York, NY

3d • Remote

About The Position

We are sharing a specialised part-time consulting opportunity for senior materials science, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering professionals to develop rigorous, domain-authentic technical problems based on real engineering work. This role focuses on creating realistic engineering tasks, assembling supporting technical data, defining objective grading criteria, and testing each problem against advanced AI systems. Selected experts will analyse model performance, identify weaknesses in technical reasoning, and refine tasks until they meaningfully distinguish strong engineering judgement from superficial solutions.

Requirements

• Senior-level professional expertise in materials science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering , or a closely related field
• Relevant materials science experience may include metals, ceramics, composites, materials characterisation, or additive manufacturing
• Relevant electrical engineering experience may include analog, RF, or power systems
• Relevant mechanical engineering experience may include mechanical design, CFD and fluid mechanics, heat transfer, pressure vessels, NDE, or CAE
• Strong ability to translate real professional experience into technically rigorous engineering problems
• Comfortable working with technically ambiguous or evolving project requirements
• Able to explain clearly why an engineering solution is correct or incorrect
• Strong analytical reasoning and technical writing skills
• Comfortable collaborating with project leads and other engineering domain experts

Responsibilities

• Author realistic technical problems based on engineering work and scenarios from your professional domain
• Design tasks that require genuine subject-matter expertise and applied engineering judgement
• Create clear prompts, specifications, constraints, and expected outputs
• Ensure problems reflect authentic professional workflows and engineering decision-making
• Develop tasks that are challenging while remaining objectively assessable
• Develop and evaluate tasks involving metals, ceramics, composites, and related materials systems
• Apply expertise in materials selection, properties, processing, and performance
• Create scenarios involving materials characterisation and interpretation of technical evidence
• Develop problems related to additive manufacturing where relevant
• Evaluate whether proposed conclusions are technically supported by the available information
• Develop tasks involving mechanical design and engineering analysis
• Create problems related to CFD, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, pressure vessels, NDE, and CAE
• Evaluate engineering calculations, assumptions, constraints, and design decisions
• Assess whether proposed solutions satisfy realistic technical requirements
• Apply professional judgement to complex mechanical engineering scenarios
• Develop engineering problems involving analog electronics, RF systems, and power engineering
• Evaluate designs, calculations, specifications, and technical recommendations
• Assess whether proposed solutions reflect appropriate electrical engineering principles
• Identify technical weaknesses, unsupported assumptions, or incorrect reasoning
• Apply senior-level judgement to domain-specific engineering tasks
• Build structured data rooms containing the technical information required to solve each task
• Select supporting data, specifications, calculations, references, and engineering evidence
• Ensure task inputs are sufficient for rigorous evaluation without making solutions trivial
• Maintain internal consistency across prompts, technical data, and expected outcomes
• Identify ambiguity that could prevent objective assessment
• Develop clear grading criteria that make technical tasks objectively scorable
• Define what constitutes a strong, incomplete, or incorrect engineering solution
• Explain both why correct approaches succeed and why incorrect approaches fail
• Establish technically defensible expectations for reasoning and final conclusions
• Collaborate with other domain experts to define appropriate quality standards
• Run authored tasks against advanced models and analyse resulting solutions
• Identify where technical reasoning succeeds, fails, or relies on unintended shortcuts
• Refine tasks to improve difficulty and discriminatory value
• Adjust evidence, specifications, or grading criteria where required
• Validate that final tasks meaningfully test expert engineering capability
• Evaluate proposed engineering solutions for accuracy, completeness, and reasoning quality
• Identify incorrect assumptions, calculations, interpretations, or design decisions
• Distinguish superficially plausible answers from technically defensible solutions
• Provide precise explanations of technical errors
• Apply consistent professional standards across evaluation tasks

Benefits

• Part-time independent contractor engagement
• Fully remote
• Flexible scheduling based on project requirements
• Daily onboarding sessions and multiple office hours are available for project support
• Projects may be extended, shortened, or concluded based on project needs and performance

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Part-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed