Chemical Engineering

Role Overview

• Seeking an experienced Chemical Engineering expert to lead a team of technical trainers developing realistic, terminal-based engineering tasks for a frontier AI training and evaluation initiative.
• Oversee a pod of approximately 5–10 trainers, review chemical engineering tasks for technical accuracy, reproducibility, and evaluation quality, and ensure tasks reflect authentic chemical engineering workflows.
• Mentor trainers, maintain quality standards, and drive consistent task delivery.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor a pod of technical trainers, ensuring consistent quality, productivity, and timely delivery of chemical engineering tasks.
• Review engineering tasks end to end, including problem statements, reaction kinetics, thermodynamic and property data, process flowsheets, computational environments, reference solutions, and automated tests.
• Validate tasks involving:
• Reaction engineering
• Thermodynamics
• Phase equilibria
• Transport phenomena
• Separation processes
• Process simulation
• Process control
• Optimization
• Combustion
• Electrochemical engineering
• Ensure tasks reflect realistic chemical engineering workflows and require meaningful multi-step technical reasoning.
• Verify engineering correctness across mass and energy balances, thermodynamic consistency, property data, unit handling, and numerical convergence.
• Validate computational models, stiff ODE/DAE solvers, solver tolerances, initial conditions, and simulation results to ensure reproducibility and technical accuracy.
• Review automated graders to ensure they evaluate meaningful engineering outputs such as conversion, yield, selectivity, purity, energy consumption, and process constraint satisfaction.
• Identify technical inaccuracies, unrealistic assumptions, incorrect tolerances, and opportunities to bypass engineering calculations or simulations.
• Provide clear, actionable technical feedback, track revisions, and ensure quality issues are resolved before task approval.
• Onboard trainers, allocate work, monitor quality and throughput, escalate blockers, and maintain technical documentation and best practices.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Ph.D., postdoctoral experience, or equivalent advanced technical experience in Chemical Engineering.
• Strong programming skills in Python, Julia, C/C++, or MATLAB/Octave.
• Proficiency in Linux environments.
• Hands-on expertise in at least one major area: process modeling, reaction kinetics, thermodynamic modeling, process simulation, or optimization.
• Strong understanding of chemical engineering fundamentals, numerical methods, computational modeling, and technical validation.
• Experience reviewing complex technical work, chemical process simulations, computational models, or research outputs.
• Ability to evaluate mass and energy balances, thermodynamic assumptions, numerical accuracy, solver convergence, and the reliability of computational results.
• Strong analytical judgment with the ability to identify technical errors, edge cases, and flawed engineering assumptions.
• Experience mentoring, reviewing, or leading small technical teams.
• Excellent written communication skills for providing precise technical feedback and documenting quality standards.

Nice to Have

• Experience with chemical engineering simulation and computational tools such as Cantera, CoolProp, Pyomo, IDAES, DWSIM, CasADi, or OpenFOAM.
• Familiarity with commercial process simulation software such as Aspen Plus, Aspen HYSYS, or gPROMS, including reproducing workflows using open-source tools.
• Experience with process optimization, reactor modeling, separation systems, process control, or electrochemical simulations.
• Familiarity with Docker, Git, CI/CD pipelines, and automated testing.
• Experience developing or evaluating AI coding agents, terminal-based agents, or LLM-generated engineering solutions.
• Industry experience in petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, energy, specialty chemicals, or chemical process manufacturing.
• Prior experience in AI training, technical quality control, benchmark development, or evaluation programs.

Offer Details

• Commitments Required: At least 4 hours per day and minimum 40 hours per week with overlap of 4 hours with PST.
• Employment type: Contractor assignment (no medical/paid leave)
• Duration of contract: 4 weeks