Remote | Mechanical Design Engineer — Up to $80/hour

24-MAG is offering a specialized consulting opportunity for senior mechanical design engineers with doctoral-level expertise. The role involves developing complex engineering problems, authoring expert-level solutions, and validating these against AI models to ensure they test advanced mechanical design reasoning.

Responsibilities:

• Author original, technically rigorous free-response problems based on realistic mechanical and product-design scenarios
• Develop questions requiring advanced engineering reasoning rather than straightforward textbook recall
• Incorporate real-world design constraints, manufacturing considerations, tolerances, and engineering trade-offs
• Create problems reflecting genuine production-design responsibilities and decision-making
• Develop scenarios involving CAD-based mechanical and product design
• Apply GD&T principles to drawings, assemblies, interfaces, and manufacturing requirements
• Incorporate tolerance stacks and dimensional analysis into complex engineering problems
• Address DFM considerations and production constraints
• Develop scenarios involving drawing creation, review, revision, and release
• Write complete expert-level solutions for each authored engineering problem
• Clearly document engineering assumptions, calculations, design reasoning, and methodology
• Demonstrate how experienced design engineers evaluate competing design options
• Ensure solutions are technically rigorous, internally consistent, and independently verifiable
• Include appropriate consideration of manufacturability, tolerances, interfaces, and production requirements
• Test authored problems against multiple frontier language models
• Evaluate whether current AI systems can correctly solve each engineering problem
• Identify reasoning errors, design mistakes, or incomplete technical approaches in model responses
• Refine problems where necessary to maintain an appropriately demanding level of difficulty
• Validate that each problem meaningfully tests advanced mechanical design expertise

Requirements:

• A PhD in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Industrial Design, or a closely related discipline is required
• At least 5 years of hands-on professional or industry experience in production design roles
• Direct ownership of mechanical designs through development and production release
• Strong practical expertise in CAD and mechanical design
• Extensive experience with GD&T and tolerance stack analysis
• Hands-on knowledge of design for manufacturability
• Experience creating, reviewing, and releasing engineering drawings
• Strong technical writing and analytical communication skills
• Doctoral research should be complemented by substantial hands-on industry or production-design experience
• Strong practical experience owning real mechanical designs through manufacturing and release is particularly important for this engagement
• Hands-on production-design experience is required; candidates whose experience is limited to analysis or simulation without design ownership are unlikely to match the project requirements
• CSWP or CSWE certification
• Experience designing products or mechanical systems within a major industrial, aerospace, automotive, technology, or manufacturing organisation
• Advanced CAD expertise using professional mechanical design platforms
• Experience performing complex tolerance analyses
• Strong knowledge of GD&T standards and drawing practices
• Background working closely with manufacturing, suppliers, quality, and production teams
• Experience resolving design-for-manufacturing issues during product development
• Prior experience authoring engineering assessments, technical problems, or training materials
• Familiarity with AI models or structured technical evaluation