Nonproliferation Analyst - Remote Contract
Listing checked September 15, 2026 · pay as published by Mercor
Overview
Neon is assembling a panel of nuclear materials and safeguards experts to red-team frontier AI models. The goal: see whether a model can separate legitimate technical questions from requests that enable misuse. You write single-turn prompts across benign, dual-use, and adversarial levels, then evaluate model answers against policy and draft reference responses with technical reasoning. This domain sits on the dual-use line, where an export control list can guide a legitimate shipment or reveal what a procurement agent should avoid declaring. The panel needs practitioners, not generalists, to draw that line with consistency.
What You'll Do7
- 1Compose single-turn prompts in nuclear materials and safeguards that map to benign, dual-use, and adversarial categories.
- 2Assess model responses against a written policy standard and decide whether each answer meets it.
- 3Draft reference answers that show what a correct response should include and the technical reasoning behind it.
- 4Separate routine professional questions from queries that seek circumvention or misuse.
- 5Apply export control lists, catch-all controls, and end-user screening concepts when shaping prompts.
- 6Document each judgment with a written rationale that non-specialists can follow.
- 7Flag cases where a refusal is as harmful as an unsafe answer, such as routine export-classification questions.
Requirements10
- 1Professional work on proliferation questions, including export control, treaty implementation, or programme analysis.
- 2Ability to distinguish a compliance question from a circumvention question.
- 3Background with dual-use lists, catch-all controls, end-user screening, or enforcement.
- 4Experience with NPT, CTBT, safeguards agreements, or bilateral cooperation agreements.
- 5Proliferation pathway or programme analysis at a laboratory, agency, ministry, or research institute.
- 6Sanctions, procurement network, or illicit trade analysis experience.
- 7Open-source or technical analysis of nuclear programmes.
- 8Strong technical writing, published research, or expert witness work. Include a sample or link.
- 9Red-teaming experience preferred.
- 10Comfort reading and writing about misuse scenarios for sustained periods.
Who Should Apply
The best fit is someone who has handled proliferation questions in a professional setting, whether through export control licensing, treaty implementation, or programme analysis. You can tell a routine compliance question from one that aims to circumvent controls, and you can explain that difference in writing that a non-specialist understands. Red-teaming experience helps, as does a record of published research or technical writing. This role will not suit generalists who know nuclear policy from headlines but have not made licensing, safeguards, or enforcement calls. Candidates often lose fit by treating all sensitive questions the same, either refusing benign export-classification queries or answering adversarial ones. Another common miss: submitting no writing sample when the application asks for one.
Salary Insight
The compensation is $75 for a one-time task. That figure fits a short, scoped engagement rather than a full project or ongoing panel seat. Pay for red-teaming and expert evaluation work varies with task length and seniority, so treat this rate as specific to the single deliverable described.
Pay and demand for Cybersecurity roles
AggregatedTypical pay
$55/hour
This role
$75 fixed
Most Cybersecurity roles pay $35–$78 per hour.
Based on 44 similar roles that publish pay · 3 publish only a top rate; those count at the rate they gave
Rates shown per hour. Yearly and monthly pay converted; one-time fees and non-USD pay are not included.
- Live similar roles
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- Listed in last 30 days
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Hiring most right now: Neon (27) · micro1 (16) · AfterQuery (4)
Most requested skills · share of roles
- red teaming34%
- penetration testing29%
- reverse engineering28%
- technical writing28%
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Compensation
$75 fixed
Required Skills
Application Tip
Lead your application with a short writing sample or link that shows you can explain a dual-use judgment to a non-specialist. Name the control list, treaty, or safeguards framework you know, and state whether you have red-teamed AI outputs before. If you hold an NDA or prepublication review obligation, say so up front so the panel can scope the work.
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