Manufacturing - Automotive (Mechanical Engineering) 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 automotive mechanical-engineering professionals from Fortune 500 OEMs and major Tier-1 suppliers (e.g., GM, Ford, Stellantis, Tesla, Toyota North America, Magna, Bosch, Denso, Aptiv) 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 vehicle design, powertrain / chassis engineering, manufacturing engineering, or automotive quality to build a high-fidelity environment that mirrors the tools, files, and cross-functional workflows of a modern automotive 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 design reviews, DFMEA / PFMEA documents, PPAP packages, tolerance analyses, benchmarking decks, test reports, and email threads that reflect how you actually organize your work — with some representation of the platforms that support it (e.g., ANSYS Fluent / STAR-CCM+, Siemens Opcenter, SAP S/4HANA)
• 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 automotive engineering 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 automotive engineering 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

• BS/MS in Mechanical Engineering or related discipline
• 3+ years of full-time experience at a Fortune 500 automotive OEM or Tier-1 supplier
• Background in one or more areas such as:
  • Vehicle or subsystem design (body, chassis, interior, powertrain, thermal)
  • CAE / CAD / simulation engineering (structural, NVH, CFD, durability)
  • Manufacturing / process engineering (stamping, body-in-white, assembly, paint)
  • Quality engineering under IATF 16949 / APQP / PPAP
  • EV / battery / ADAS engineering
• Day-to-day use of ANSYS Fluent / STAR-CCM+, Siemens Opcenter or Rockwell FactoryTalk, and SAP S/4HANA
• Strong analytical thinking and writing — able to translate automotive engineering 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.