The posting
Role Title: Materials Science Expert
Role Type: Contract
Location: Remote
Required Skills:
- Technical Depth in a Subdomain
- Engineering Judgment Under Constraints
- Knowing When an Answer Is Wrong
- Material-science
Opportunity Snapshot:
Commitment: Flexible - fits alongside your current role
Location: Fully remote
Youâll need: Masterâs or PhD in materials science or a closely related field, plus principal-level industry experience or a faculty appointment
Your tasks: Build challenging technical problems from your own domain and define what makes an answer correct
You'll be working on:
The problems where the textbook answer isnât enough, where the right approach depends on reading the constraints correctly, where a plausible-looking solution is quietly wrong. Youâll build those problems, provide the correct analysis, and define what separates a right answer from one that only looks
What youâll do:
- Design difficult technical problems from your own area - structure-property relationships, processing, characterization, failure analysis, computational materials - with realistic constraints and supporting data.
- Provide the correct solution and walk through the reasoning that gets there.
- Define objective criteria for correctness, so another expert reviewing the work would reach the same verdict.
- Review problems built by other contributors for technical accuracy and soundness of method.
- Flag problems that turn out to be ambiguous or ungradable rather than submitting them.
What weâre looking for:
- Masterâs or PhD in materials science, metallurgy, ceramics, polymer science, condensed matter physics, or a closely related field.
- Principal, staff, or fellow-level experience in industrial or national lab research, or a faculty appointment at a leading university.
- Deep technical depth in at least one materials subdomain, with hands-on ownership of the work.
- Able to explain why an answer is correct clearly enough that another scientist could verify it.
- Publications, patents, or a record of technical leadership is a strong plus.
- AI or LLM evaluation experience is a plus, but not required.



