Civil Engineer Quality Assurance Lead (QAL)
SME Careers • Remote
Education
Master's
Type
Hourly
Pay Rate
$105/hr
Listed
53d ago
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- Interview
- Required i As stated in the listing: “Selection process involves an AI interview, a domain-specific task, and an interview with a recruiter.”
About this role
From the SME Careers listing
In this hourly, remote contractor role, you will work as a Civil Engineering Quality Assurance Lead (QAL) to oversee quality, consistency, and trainer performance across civil engineering AI training projects. You will review AI-generated civil engineering content and trainer/QA work, evaluate output quality against project guidelines, provide precise written feedback, and ensure that all contributors follow the expected quality standards.
You will assess work for technical accuracy, engineering reasoning, calculation correctness, standards awareness, unit consistency, safety considerations, clarity, formatting, instruction-following, and adherence to project-specific rubrics. You will spot recurring quality issues, communicate updates to trainers and QAs, support onboarding, maintain documentation, and help activate contributors who are not working consistently. This role requires strong civil engineering expertise, strong English communication skills, excellent attention to detail, structured communication, and the ability to manage quality workflows across remote technical teams.
This role is with SME Careers, a fast-growing AI Data Services company and subsidiary of SuperAnnotate, delivering training data for many of the world’s largest AI companies and foundation-model labs. Your civil engineering quality leadership will directly help improve the world’s premier AI models by ensuring that engineering training data is accurate, logically sound, clearly explained, well-documented, and aligned with client expectations.
Selection process involves an AI interview, a domain-specific task, and an interview with a recruiter.
Key responsibilities
- Quality monitoring: Spot-check civil engineering items, identify quality issues, provide ongoing feedback through DMs, and escalate recurring or critical issues.
- Technical review: Evaluate AI-generated engineering explanations, structural calculations, geotechnical reasoning, construction guidance, infrastructure recommendations, diagrams/descriptions, and problem-solving workflows for correctness and clarity.
- Trainer and QA communication: Update trainers and QAs on Discord about new item guidelines, project changes, workflow updates, quality expectations, and civil-engineering-specific review standards.
- Question handling: Respond to trainer/QA questions clearly and promptly, especially around engineering assumptions, units, formulas, loads, factors of safety, design constraints, standards references, and rubric interpretation.
- Trainer/QA activation management: DM contributors who are inactive or not working, encourage activation, track follow-ups, and flag availability issues when needed.
- Documentation: Create and maintain civil engineering project documentation, including style guides, trackers, FAQs, quality notes, examples, honeypots, calibration tasks, and onboarding materials.
- Onboarding and training: Schedule and run onboarding/training calls with trainers and QAs to explain project expectations, workflows, rubrics, quality standards, and civil-engineering-specific review requirements.
- Quality alignment: Ensure all trainers and QAs apply engineering guidelines consistently and understand updates as projects evolve.
- Risk and safety review: Flag unsafe, misleading, or overconfident engineering recommendations, especially where structures, infrastructure, construction safety, foundations, transportation systems, drainage, or public safety may be affected.
- Process improvement: Identify recurring quality gaps, propose workflow improvements, and help build scalable QA processes for civil engineering AI training projects.
Your profile
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Civil Engineering, Structural Engineering, Geotechnical Engineering, Transportation Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Construction Engineering, or a closely related engineering field.
- Strong grasp of the English language to follow project guidelines, communicate with teams, and provide clear technical feedback in English.
- 3+ years of professional experience in civil engineering, structural design, geotechnical engineering, transportation planning, construction management, infrastructure design, water resources, environmental engineering, technical review, engineering education, or related workflows.
- Strong understanding of core civil engineering topics such as statics, structural analysis, reinforced concrete, steel design, soil mechanics, foundations, hydraulics, hydrology, transportation systems, surveying, construction materials, and engineering drawing interpretation.
- Ability to evaluate engineering content against detailed rubrics and identify issues such as incorrect assumptions, flawed calculations, missing units, unsafe recommendations, code/standards hallucinations, incomplete explanations, or unrealistic design guidance.
- Familiarity with common civil engineering tools or workflows such as AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Revit, ETABS, SAP2000, STAAD.Pro, SAFE, HEC-RAS, HEC-HMS, ArcGIS/QGIS, Bluebeam, Excel, MATLAB, or Python is preferred.
- Experience leading or supporting remote teams of trainers, annotators, reviewers, engineers, technical writers, or QAs is strongly preferred.
- Comfortable working in fast-moving remote environments using tools such as Discord, Google Sheets, Google Docs, trackers, dashboards, and project management systems.
- Highly detail-oriented and organized, with the ability to maintain style guides, FAQs, trackers, onboarding materials, honeypots, calibration tasks, and other quality documentation.
- Experience with AI training, data annotation, large language models, prompt/response evaluation, technical content QA, or rubric-based LLM evaluation is a strong plus.
🌍 Geographic Availability This role is available to qualified experts globally. However, as a U.S.-based company, SME Careers complies with U.S. export control and sanctions regulations. Eligibility depends on your country of residence and any applicable trade restrictions. Some projects may have additional language or region-specific requirements.
💰 Pay Rate May Vary Based on Your Location Your actual compensation will be determined based on your location and local market conditions. See regional job listings for localized pay information, or the application process will clarify your specific rate.
If you're unsure whether you're eligible, proceed with the application—SME's screening will determine your jurisdiction status and applicable compensation.
How long hiring takes
Across the AI training platforms we refer candidates to, the median gap between referral and hire is about 30 days. It varies by platform and role, so treat it as a rough guide for this one.
Why this role
This Civil Engineering Quality Assurance Lead role pays $105 per hour to oversee AI-generated content across structural analysis, geotechnical engineering, and transportation engineering. Reviewers check engineering reasoning, calculation correctness, standards awareness, and safety considerations, which requires someone who can verify a structural load calculation rather than just recognize civil engineering vocabulary. It fits a licensed or formally trained civil engineer who reviews technical work across these subdisciplines as part of their normal practice.
Talent pool
We're light on STEM candidates
We've matched 65 people with a STEM background against 726 STEM listings we've tracked, so most go out without one. Set up a profile and we'll consider you for a role like this one.
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Common questions
Does SME Careers offer a path for advancement?
Yes. SME Careers is unusual among AI training platforms for this: it publishes an explicit career ladder, Data Trainer, then Quality Analyst, then QA Lead, then Project Manager. Consistent, high-quality work is what moves you up it.
How does SME Careers pay freelancers?
Weekly, through Deel. Deel also handles tax compliance, which is how SME Careers pays contractors across more than 40 countries without running its own international payroll.
Why do these AI training roles pay so much?
Because general knowledge isn't what's being tested. The model already knows the basics; what it needs is expertise on edge cases, the rare, difficult, highly technical judgment calls only a senior professional in the field would make correctly.
What does the day-to-day workload look like for elite-expert AI training roles?
Slow and deep, not fast and repetitive. A single task can take 45-60 minutes of researching citations or verifying complex calculations. Quality is what's being measured here, not throughput.
What does STEM work look like for a Civil Engineer Quality Assurance Lead (QAL)?
Tasks here are scoped to STEM, not generic labeling. As a Civil Engineer Quality Assurance Lead (QAL), expect to draw on real domain judgment (evaluating outputs, correcting errors, or providing expert reasoning specific to STEM) rather than following a one-size-fits-all rubric. If you don't have hands-on STEM background, this is likely not the right listing to start with.
What specific skills does this listing call for?
Documentation, Geotechnical Engineering, Trainer Feedback, and Civil Engineering are named directly in the listing. If you don't have hands-on experience with these, expect the screening process to test for them directly rather than accepting adjacent experience as a substitute.
How much does this specific role pay?
This listing is posted at $105/hr, a per-task rate. Pay can change between when we last checked the listing and when you apply, so confirm the current number on the platform's own application page before committing time.
What happens when I click Apply on this listing?
You'll be taken to SME Careers's external site to complete your application there. This listing links through a referral, but the process is identical to applying directly; the link just routes you correctly. Create an account on their site and follow their onboarding steps.
Do I need a Master's to qualify?
This role lists a master's degree as a requirement. In practice, the domain assessment is the real gate. If you can pass it, the degree is usually secondary. However, some platforms verify credentials formally, so list your actual qualifications accurately on your profile.
Is there an interview?
Yes. Selection process involves an AI interview, a domain-specific task, and an interview with a recruiter.
Who is behind SME Careers?
SME Careers is the expert talent division of SuperAnnotate, an AI data infrastructure platform, connecting domain experts with high-level AI training projects.