Manufacturing - Aerospace & Defense Expert

Role Overview

Mercor is partnering with leading AI labs on Project Atlas — an initiative to build realistic enterprise environments that frontier AI agents are trained and evaluated in. We're seeking experienced aerospace and defense professionals from Fortune 500 primes and major Tier-1 suppliers (e.g., Lockheed Martin, Boeing, RTX, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, L3Harris) to recreate the digital workspaces they run every day and design the tasks that genuinely challenge state-of-the-art AI.

You'll bring your expertise in A&D program management, design, manufacturing, supply-chain, or quality / mission-assurance to build a high-fidelity environment that mirrors the tools, files, and workflows of a regulated defense or aerospace enterprise — and then author tasks grounded in the programs you actually run today.

Key Responsibilities

• Build a realistic digital workspace centered on the Drive folders you use day-to-day — the program review decks, CDRLs / SOWs, engineering change proposals, V&V plans, supplier qualification packages, risk registers, and email threads that reflect how you actually organize your work — with some representation of the platforms that support it (e.g., ANSYS Fluent simulations, Siemens Opcenter MES, Jira / Confluence)
• Design multi-step tasks grounded in your real workflows that require navigating multiple apps, files, and stakeholders in a way that meaningfully challenges frontier AI agents
• Collaborate with other aerospace and defense experts in your field to design the environment, shape task scope, and review each other's scenarios for realism and rigor
• Work asynchronously with research teams to refine task designs and evaluation criteria for A&D agent benchmarks
• Contribute to frontier AI research and benchmarking — the work you produce directly informs how leading labs train and evaluate the next generation of AI systems

Ideal Qualifications

• 3+ years of full-time experience at a Fortune 500 A&D prime, major Tier-1 supplier, or federally-funded R&D center
• Background in one or more areas such as:
  • Program / project management on DoD or NASA contracts (EVM, IMS, CDRLs)
  • Aerospace design or manufacturing engineering (structures, avionics, propulsion)
  • Supply-chain management under DFARS / ITAR / CMMC
  • Quality and mission assurance (AS9100, NADCAP)
  • Systems engineering, V&V, or integrated test
• US Person status required for most A&D work; active / prior clearance not required for this project but familiarity with classified-program workflows is a plus
• Day-to-day use of ANSYS Fluent / STAR-CCM+, Siemens Opcenter or Rockwell FactoryTalk, and Jira / Confluence
• Strong analytical thinking and writing — able to translate A&D workflows into structured task specs

Compensation Note

• Task Completion Pay: Competitive and based on task quality (~$900 – $1,250 per completed task, subject to change as the project evolves)
• Performance Bonus: Top performers receive a weekly bonus incentive on top of their per task rate!
• Hourly Opportunity: Top performers may be invited to transition to an hourly compensation model based on sustained quality and throughput.