$65-$170/hr electrical and hardware engineering work, on your schedule
You review AI-drafted schematics, firmware, and circuit analysis the way you would a board before tape-out, catching the grounding mistake and the part that browns out at temperature. Remote, a few hours a week, paid hourly.
Trusted by top research companies
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 hardware engineer's eye on a noisy power rail 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.
Electrical Engineering questions
Still curious? Write to us at support@terac.com.
Power systems PEs are actively sought, especially for load flow, protection coordination, and reviewing a model's one-line diagrams or arc-flash calcs. Your PE signals standards depth (IEEE 1584, NFPA 70E, NERC CIP) that is hard to source. Transmission planning, substation design, and power electronics are each treated as distinct domains.
No. Your role is evaluation and critique, not certification. You never affix your PE seal, sign construction documents, or assume engineer-of-record liability. The work is expert review and annotation, which sits outside the scope-of-practice obligations that govern sealed deliverables under state practice acts.
Tool-specific depth is exactly what makes a reviewer valuable for some pools. Engineers who live in LTspice, Cadence Virtuoso, or Altium get sessions where outputs include netlists, simulation setups, or layouts that need hands-on tool literacy to critique. Generalist breadth and narrow tool expertise are both in demand.
Your background in MIL-STD, DO-254, or high-reliability space and defense design qualifies you for those sub-domains. Tasks use publicly available or purpose-built synthetic scenarios, not controlled technical data, so you will not engage with ITAR-restricted material. Your domain judgment is what is needed, not access to any program.
By specialty: evaluating a model's explanations of circuit behavior, reviewing its MATLAB, Python, or VHDL/Verilog against a spec, critiquing worked solutions in electromagnetics, signal integrity, or control, and checking whether a recommendation correctly applies a standard like IEEE 802.3 or IEC 61508. You may also write your own worked solutions as training examples.
Why your expertise matters
Today's electrical AI lays out a PCB that ignores trace-impedance limits, specs a part outside its derating curve, and proposes a control loop that oscillates under real line-voltage swing. Catching that takes a design-review eye, not a textbook. Your corrections teach these tools the difference between knowing Ohm's law and knowing why that SMPS topology fails EMC pre-scan.
How pay works
Your rate within the $65-$170 band tracks your depth. A power electronics engineer designing to IEC 61800, an RF designer who reads S-parameter models, a PE, or anyone in safety-critical systems earns toward the top. Work is remote, billed by the verified hour, paid once the platform confirms completion.
What the work looks like
A sample of the electrical and hardware engineering work you would pick up. Every project is scoped, remote, and paid on verified completion.
- Flag component selections in a model's buck-boost converter schematic that violate voltage or current derating at worst-case temperature.
- Review a model's PCB stackup and differential-pair routing for a 10 Gbps SerDes link and note impedance mismatches or reference-plane breaks.
- Write a worked example sizing a fuse and breaker for a 480 V three-phase motor branch circuit per NEC Article 430.
- Assess whether a model's Python scope-capture script handles instrument timeouts and data scaling for a Tektronix MDO scope.
- Draft a walkthrough of a power-module thermal analysis, including junction-to-case and case-to-ambient resistance.
- Catch the Park/Clarke sign errors or missing current-loop anti-windup in a model's field-oriented control algorithm.
Specialties we match
Electrical Engineering projects span a wide range of focus areas. Tell us where you go deep and we route the work that fits.
- Power electronics design
- PCB layout and signal integrity
- EMC/EMI compliance (FCC Part 15, CISPR 32)
- Motor drives and inverter control
- RF and microwave circuit design
- Embedded firmware and bare-metal C
- SPICE and circuit simulation
- FPGA / HDL (VHDL, Verilog)
- Protection relay and SCADA systems
- Functional safety (IEC 61508, ISO 26262)
- High-voltage and MV switchgear
- Analog mixed-signal IC design
