Mechanical Engineers: $60-$160/hr from AI Labs

Open application· 73 spots this round

$60-$160/hr mechanical engineering work, on your schedule

Review AI-generated designs, FMEAs, tolerance analyses, and manufacturing plans the way you'd review a junior engineer's package. Flag the part that won't survive fatigue, the tolerance that can't be held, the assembly that fails on the line. Hard-won knowledge of how things actually break is what AI labs are missing.

Fully remoteYour scheduleWeekly pay

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Hi, we're Zac and Jack, the founders of Terac. We want to talk to you directly, because you are the most important part of what we're building.

Terac is a community of experts. People who have spent years getting good at something specific and hard. The world is about to need more of you, not less. As AI takes on more of the world's work, the bottleneck shifts to the people who actually know what they're talking about.

Expert labor is the rarest resource in the world right now, and it is shockingly hard to find. The companies that need a mechanical engineer's eye on a tolerance stack-up spend weeks chasing people, paying placement fees, and settling for whoever is available. Meanwhile thousands of qualified people are sitting with knowledge that no one ever asks for.

That gap is what we're here to close. Every project that lands on Terac is routed to the people who actually know the answer, on their schedule, paid fairly, and only when the work is verified. No middleman taking a cut of your time. No vague gigs. No chasing checks.

We care about every single person in this community. If you join Terac, you're not a row in a database to us. We read the feedback. We answer the emails. We will fight for you when a customer is being unreasonable, and we will be honest with you when something on our side is broken. The quality of this panel is our entire company, and we owe you a serious bar.

If you've made it this far, here is what we're asking: claim your profile. Put your expertise on the record. Let the world's most ambitious teams come find you for the work only you can do.

Zac & Jack

Founders

Mechanical Engineering questions

Still curious? Write to us at support@terac.com.

Simulation and FEA work is actively in demand because frontier models frequently generate plausible-looking but structurally incorrect analyses, and catching those errors requires someone who can read a mesh, boundary condition setup, or convergence plot critically. You would review model-generated FEA write-ups, identify incorrect assumptions or misapplied load cases, and create worked examples showing how an expert approaches a static structural or thermal analysis. Experience with any major solver (ANSYS Mechanical, Abaqus, Nastran, or similar) qualifies.

Terac uses your PE credential as a signal of verified expertise, not as a legal authorization to stamp drawings, so an inactive or retired PE license is still meaningful for qualification purposes. You are not practicing engineering in a jurisdiction-regulated sense during this work - you are evaluating AI outputs and writing instructional examples, which does not require an active stamp. If you hold a lapsed PE in any U.S. state or a Chartered Engineer (CEng) designation through IMechE or similar, those all count.

No. The outputs you evaluate and the examples you create are explicitly labeled as AI training and evaluation material, not engineering deliverables. Terac does not produce design documents, certifications, or anything intended to enter an engineering approval workflow, so there is no conflict with NSPE ethics rules or state board conduct standards around unauthorized practice or seal misuse.

Tasks span the full breadth of the discipline: heat transfer and thermodynamics problems, machine design (stress analysis, fatigue, fastener selection), GD&T and drawing interpretation, fluid mechanics and HVAC system sizing, manufacturing process selection, and materials selection against standards like ASTM or ASME. The mix shifts based on which model capabilities clients are training at any given time, so you will see variety rather than a single sub-domain, and you can flag task types outside your expertise before accepting them.

Yes. Industry certifications like CSWA, CSWP, and CSWE are accepted as qualifying credentials, particularly for tasks that involve reviewing AI-generated CAD rationale, part design decisions, or manufacturing feasibility commentary. Terac also accepts relevant professional certifications such as CQE (Certified Quality Engineer through ASQ), Six Sigma Black Belt in a manufacturing context, or equivalent credentials from AWS, ASME, or SME. What matters is that you can identify when a model's engineering reasoning is wrong, not the specific letters after your name.

Why your expertise matters

Mechanical engineering involves layered judgment that current AI models struggle to replicate: selecting between competing design approaches requires balancing manufacturability, material behavior under fatigue, tolerance stack-ups, and cost in ways that textbook rules cannot fully capture. When an AI generates an FEA mesh setup, a GD&T callout scheme, or a thermal analysis boundary condition, a practicing engineer can spot the subtle error that a non-specialist reviewer would miss entirely. That domain-specific error-catching is exactly what labs need to close the gap between AI that recites engineering knowledge and AI that reasons like an engineer.

How pay works

Hourly rate within the $60-$160 band is driven by depth of specialization: a generalist ME with CAD and simulation exposure starts lower, while someone with active PE licensure, domain expertise in a specific industry such as aerospace or medical devices, or fluency in advanced analysis methods like nonlinear FEA or CFD validation typically reaches the upper range. All work is fully remote, billed by the verified hour or by the completed task, and payment is released only after Terac confirms the deliverable meets quality standards, so there are no payment delays tied to client schedules.

What the work looks like

A sample of the mechanical engineering work you would pick up. Every project is scoped, remote, and paid on verified completion.

Review an AI-generated SolidWorks stress simulation setup and flag incorrect boundary conditions, contact definitions, or mesh density choices that would produce misleading von Mises results.
Evaluate a series of AI-written FMEA entries for a rotating assembly and identify failure modes that were omitted, severity ratings that are inconsistent with industry norms, or detection controls that are not feasible.
Write a worked example of selecting a bearing for a given radial load, speed, and temperature environment, showing the reasoning behind L10 life calculations and the trade-offs between lubrication types.
Assess an AI-drafted technical memo recommending a material substitution from 4140 steel to 17-4 PH stainless and judge whether the corrosion, machinability, and heat-treat arguments hold up under scrutiny.
Create a detailed comparison of two weld joint designs for a pressure-bearing component, annotating which AWS D1.1 or ASME Section IX requirements each design satisfies or violates.
Score a set of AI-generated GD&T drawings for a machined bracket, marking callouts that are ambiguous, functionally incorrect, or would be rejected at incoming inspection.