Senior Mechanical Design Engineer (AI Training)

Overview
We’re looking for an experienced Senior Mechanical Design Engineer to help train AI models. You’ll write hard, verifiable engineering problems drawn from your own specialty, work out the answers yourself, and show us exactly where today’s AI systems still fall short of a practicing engineer.
This is a new and fast-growing area for our company, focused on teaching AI to reason like an engineer. The models can already talk fluently about mechanical engineering. What they can’t yet do reliably is the actual work: size a component against a real load case, catch the failure mode a spec sheet doesn’t mention, read a CAD assembly and tell you what interferes at full travel, or predict what a design change breaks downstream. Your engineering judgment becomes the benchmark those models are measured against.
What you’ll actually do
Write challenging, closed-ended problems from your area of expertise, built so that solving them requires real engineering reasoning rather than a lookup.
Derive the correct answer, verify it, and write a worked solution showing how you got there.
Test your problems against AI systems and sharpen the ones they get right until they challenge the model.
Review AI-generated engineering analysis, designs, and technical documentation for correctness and real-world applicability.
Review other contributors’ problems and solutions for correctness, ambiguity, and rigor.
Problems draw on whatever you know best
Mechanical design and CAD: geometry, clearances, tolerances, mechanisms, and the effect of design changes.
Structures and materials: stress, deflection, fatigue, buckling, material selection, and failure analysis.
Thermal and fluids: heat transfer, thermodynamics, HVAC, pumps and piping, and fluid mechanics.
Dynamics and controls: vibration, kinematics, rotating machinery, and control systems.
Manufacturing: DFM/DFA, process selection, GD&T, tolerance stack-ups, and cost and quality trade-offs.
Roles this fits
Common backgrounds: Senior Mechanical Design Engineer, Lead Design Engineer, Principal Engineer.
What we look for
2+ years of professional mechanical engineering experience in any specialty: design, product development, manufacturing, thermal, structural, automotive, aerospace, HVAC, robotics, energy, or related fields.
Fluency in the tools of your specialty, such as CAD (SolidWorks, Fusion 360, Onshape, Creo, NX, CATIA, or Inventor), FEA/CFD, or MATLAB/Python for engineering analysis.
Strong fundamentals across mechanics of materials, dynamics, thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, and manufacturing processes.
Able to write a precise, unambiguous technical problem and a clear worked solution in fluent written English.
Meticulous: you check your own work and enjoy finding the edge case that breaks an assumption.
A bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering or a related field (completed or in progress).
Only applicants based in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, or the United States will be considered for this role.
Compensation
Up to $125+/hr depending on task difficulty and specialization. Many contributors add $100k–$200k a year; some make it their full-time income.
About DataAnnotation
DataAnnotation is where 1M+ experts train the world’s leading AI models. Hundreds of millions paid to contributors to date, and the average contributor stays 5+ years. Flexible, remote, and always project-available.
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Hourly rate up to $125+ / hour
Commitment Flexible hours
Type Independent contractor
Payouts Weekly
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Work arrangement
Yes