Remote AI evaluation work for engineers, by discipline

Engineering postings ask for the judgement a design review needs, not for code. Everything here comes from engineering postings and platform pages read on 13 October 2026.

Four disciplines, four kinds of task

Of the 72 open roles, 19 are mechanical or materials work and 10 are electrical. Another 9 are civil, construction or building review, and 20 are chemical, nuclear or safety work. The other 14 are a mix, including application-software users and field-service roles. They come from Mercor (35), SME Careers (15), micro1 (14), AfterQuery (4) and Sovrano AI (4).

Mechanical. micro1’s Mechanical Engineering Expert posting describes simulation in Python. You build the geometry and mesh, apply materials and boundary conditions, run the analysis, then decide whether the result meets the design constraints. Mercor’s version grades a model’s free body diagram and asks whether the failure mode it considered is the governing one.

Electrical. Mercor’s Electrical Design Specialist posting lists load flow, voltage drop, short-circuit analysis and protection coordination. Its Engineering Simulation Specialist role has you write a simulation with pass/fail specs. A model then tries to design a controller or circuit that meets them.

Civil and construction. Mercor’s Vulcan roles are plan review. You write a task from real drawings, such as a grading plan or a survey exception schedule, and write the correct answer. A second reviewer in your discipline checks it before it ships.

Chemical, nuclear and safety. Sovrano’s Chemical Engineer posting covers process design, thermodynamics and process safety. It also asks you to write answers that say when to bring in a licensed engineer. Mercor’s nuclear and security roles ask for benign, dual-use and adversarial test prompts, with a reference answer for each.

Software engineers have their own guide.

Pay differs by discipline, and so does the unit

Across all engineering roles the median ceiling is $100 and the highest is $200. Those are ceilings: a posting that states “up to” has a floor we do not know.

Look at the unit before the figure. Per-task pay covers 13 of the 20 chemical, nuclear and safety roles, so the median above counts only the hourly ones. On micro1, 6 postings show an hourly band but describe pay as output-based: you are paid for each task that meets the project specification.

The PE question

Most of these roles do not require a Professional Engineer licence. Just 8 postings mention one.

• Sovrano calls PE licensure welcome but not required.
• SME Careers lists it as strongly preferred on its civil, electrical and chemical engineer postings.
• Mercor’s Civil / Survey Engineer role for Vulcan asks for a PE, or a PLS for survey work. Its fire and life safety role accepts a PE in fire protection as one of three options. Its Electrical Design Specialist role lists professional engineering certification as preferred.

None of the postings says the platform checks a licence number. Mercor’s listings say only that it verifies your background. If you hold a licence, read your board’s rules before you write anything that could pass as engineering advice. This site cannot tell you where that line sits.

Your employer’s contract matters more than the platform’s

6 postings, among them Sovrano’s and Mercor’s standing engineering listings, ask you to build tasks from your own work. Mercor says its mechanical listing wants a design problem with the loads, constraints and tolerances you worked with. Sovrano wants the material needed to solve each task.

That is where an employer’s invention-assignment clause bites. If your contract gives the company your designs and work product, a problem drawn from your day job may not be yours to submit. The postings do not mention this, and they do not say who owns the task you write.

Before you apply:

• Read the intellectual property and outside-activity clauses in your own contract.
• If a clause is ambiguous, ask your employer in writing, and keep the answer.
• Base tasks on public textbook-level problems or work you clearly own.
• Never use a client’s drawings, a former employer’s data or anything under an NDA.

Mercor’s nuclear and security red-team roles state the point themselves. In 13 postings the work must not draw on classified or export-controlled information. Nor may it draw on anything under an NDA or prepublication review obligation.

Country limits

Of the 72 roles, 13 are limited to the US, by their location field or their own title and description. The Vulcan reviews want US-based reviewers working to US standards. Sovrano’s mechanical role is open to the US, UK, Ireland, Canada and Australia. A reader in the UK can see 55 of the roles listed here and one in Germany 56. The guide to working from outside the US explains what the location lines mean.

Screening: a short AI interview or a long assessment

Mercor describes a short AI interview of about 20 minutes, then a pool you are invited from when a project starts. Standing listings, which Mercor says are not specific openings, account for 4 of these roles. Sovrano describes a skills assessment that takes most people four to six hours, with one attempt and no AI assistance. The guides to Mercor’s interview, SME Careers’ interview and AfterQuery’s assessment cover the process.

What the postings do not say

• How likely a match is. Mercor says the wait can be a week or several months.
• How many hours a week you will get.
• Whether a platform or its client owns the task you write.
• How a licence is checked, if at all.

This site is not affiliated with any platform named here, and passing a screening is not a promise of work.