Explosives Specialist - Incident Analyst

About the work Mercor is assembling a panel of energetic materials and propulsion experts to red-team frontier AI models. The goal is to test whether a model can correctly judge the misuse potential of a technical request — answering legitimate questions fully while refusing genuinely dangerous ones.

You will:

• Write challenging single-turn prompts in your domain, labelled across three levels: benign, dual-use, and adversarial.
• Evaluate the responses that come back against a defined policy standard, and judge whether each was handled correctly.
• Write the reference answer — what a correct response looks like, and the technical reasoning for why.

This domain lives on the dual-use line more than most. The same residue analysis that identifies what was used is a description of what to use; the same diversion indicators that catch a bad licensee tell someone how not to be caught. A model that refuses a routine forensic identification question is failing as badly as one that answers a question it shouldn't. Drawing that line reliably is why we need practitioners rather than generalists.

Background we're looking for:

• We’re looking for people who have worked scenes and casework under a national certification — identifying materials after the fact, and inspecting the licensees who hold them.
• What matters most is being able to tell a routine professional question from one that's fishing for something else: the same residue signature that closes a case describes a recipe in reverse.
• You will be writing prompts that sit exactly on that line, then judging whether the model held it.

Examples of relevant backgrounds (ideally with red-teaming experience):

• Federally certified explosives specialist or national equivalent — scene and materials analysis
• Forensic laboratory identification of energetic materials and post-blast residues
• Post-incident analysis and reporting for an agency or laboratory
• Regulatory inspection of licensees and permittees — storage, records and diversion indicators
• Expert testimony or casework on energetic materials

What this role demands beyond technical depth:

• This is writing-intensive work. Every judgment you make needs a written rationale that a non-specialist can follow.
• Prior technical writing, published research, or expert witness experience is a strong signal; please include a sample or link.
• You will also be reading and writing about misuse scenarios in your field for sustained periods.
• We brief experts on this in advance, and you can pause or step away at any point without penalty.

Before you apply:

• Your work here will not involve, and must not draw on, classified or export-controlled information, or anything covered by an NDA or prepublication review obligation.
• If you hold such obligations you may still be a good fit; tell us in your application and we will scope the work accordingly.