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About This Role
About Mariana Minerals
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Mariana Minerals is a software\-first, vertically integrated minerals company on a mission to supply the critical minerals powering modern energy, AI, and defense technologies. We’re reimagining the minerals supply chain by combining deep industry expertise with advanced software, automation, and data\-driven decision\-making.
The Role
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Mariana Minerals is building the critical minerals supply chain from the ground up—and we're looking for Machine Learning Engineers to help make it autonomous.
We're not a software company selling tools to mining operators. We are a mining company that builds software. Mariana designs, builds, commissions, and operates our own mines and refineries. We develop proprietary chemical processes and run them at lab, pilot, and commercial scale. Today, we're producing battery\-grade lithium salts from real oil and gas wastewater in our facilities. Our first commercial\-scale lithium production facility, Lithium One, is targeting initial production in Q1 of 2027\.
As a Machine Learning Engineer at Mariana, you'll help build and improve the machine learning systems that control our mineral refining facilities. You'll start with well\-scoped problems inside our simulators and training pipelines—and ramp quickly toward owning models that run on real, operating plants. Your work won't live behind dashboards or proxy metrics; you'll see its impact in real recovery rates, energy consumption, reagent usage, and uptime.
The Tech
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This is some of the most interesting applied AI work happening today.
Our internal platform uses the same reinforcement learning toolkits that power self\-driving vehicles and humanoid robots—but applied to autonomous, short\-interval control of mineral refining circuits. Models adjust operating set points and configurations in real time, optimizing across lithium recovery, reagent consumption, energy intensity, and equipment uptime simultaneously.
The environment is noisy and non\-stationary: wastewater compositions shift, ore grades change, equipment ages. The system must continuously adapt. The end goal is fully autonomous refining operations. When you ship here, you can literally watch the physics change.
Under the hood, that means training control models inside physically realistic simulators of our process units, then closing the gap against real plant data before anything touches live equipment.
What You’ll Do
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- Run reinforcement learning experiments in our physically realistic simulators of mineral processing operations, and help turn the results into better controllers.
- Build and refine pieces of our training environments—reward functions, observations, and action logic—with guidance from senior engineers.
- Train control models, track and interpret their performance, and dig into why a model underperforms.
- Help close the gap between simulation and reality by comparing model behavior against real plant data and flagging where the physics diverges.
- Write clean, well\-tested code and contribute to the services that put models into production.
- Partner with process and chemistry experts to understand the unit operations you're modeling.
Desired Qualifications
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- 0–4 years of experience (including internships or research) in machine learning, reinforcement learning, or scientific computing—or a strong recent graduate with demonstrated project depth.
- Solid grounding in machine learning fundamentals, with working knowledge of modern deep learning; exposure to reinforcement learning is a strong plus.
- Proficiency in Python and comfort reading and debugging an existing codebase.
- Curiosity about physical, industrial systems and eagerness to learn chemistry and process engineering from experts who will challenge your assumptions.
- A self\-starter who asks good questions, ships, and escalates blockers early.
Why This Role
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We own the projects, generate the data, and close the loop. Every facility we build makes the software smarter—and the next facility faster and cheaper.
Mining is one of the last major industrial sectors that hasn't been rebuilt with modern software. The opportunity here isn't a feature gap—it's entire workflows and systems that don't exist yet.
Your work will directly shape how critical minerals are produced at scale in the coming decades.
Why Join Us?
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At Mariana Minerals, you’ll be part of a mission\-driven team reshaping the way critical minerals are sourced and supplied globally. You’ll have the autonomy to make big decisions, the tool
Our culture is built on three principles:
Extreme Ownership – We take full responsibility for outcomes, relentlessly driving toward solutions.
Engineer Out Requirements, then Automate – We simplify, optimize, and then automate for scale.
Share Your Legos – We collaborate openly, share knowledge, and empower each other to build bigger, better solutions.
Join us as we build the future of responsible mineral sourcing and supply.
*Mariana is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected status.*
Compensation Range: $120K \- $160K
Salary Context
This $120K-$160K range is below the median for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $180K across 1937 roles with salary data).
View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →Role Details
About This Role
AI/ML Engineers build and deploy machine learning models in production. They work across the full ML lifecycle: data pipelines, model training, evaluation, and serving infrastructure. The role has evolved significantly over the past two years. Where ML Engineers once spent most of their time on model architecture, the job now tilts heavily toward inference optimization, cost management, and integrating LLM capabilities into existing systems. Companies want engineers who can ship production systems, and the experimenter-only role is fading fast.
Day-to-day, you're writing training pipelines, debugging data quality issues, setting up evaluation frameworks, and figuring out why your model performs differently in staging than it did on your dev set. The best ML engineers are obsessive about reproducibility and measurement. They instrument everything. They know that a model is only as good as the data feeding it and the infrastructure serving it.
Across the 3,823 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 69% of the market. At Mariana Minerals, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week might include: debugging a data pipeline that's silently dropping 3% of training examples, running A/B tests on a new model version, writing documentation for a feature flag system that lets you roll back model deployments, and reviewing a junior engineer's PR for a new evaluation metric. Meetings tend to be cross-functional since ML touches product, engineering, and data teams.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
Skills Required
Python and PyTorch dominate the requirements. Most roles expect experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX. RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) has become a top-3 skill requirement as companies integrate LLMs into their products. Docker and Kubernetes show up in about a third of postings, reflecting the production focus of the role.
Beyond the core stack, employers increasingly want experience with experiment tracking tools (MLflow, Weights & Biases), feature stores, and vector databases. Fine-tuning experience is valuable but less common than you'd think from reading Twitter. Most production LLM work is RAG and prompt engineering, not fine-tuning. If you have both, you're in a strong position.
Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
Compensation Benchmarks
AI/ML Engineer roles pay a median of $181,170 based on 12,692 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $165,000. This role's midpoint ($140K) sits 23% below the category median. Disclosed range: $120K to $160K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $200,100. Top-quartile compensation starts at $253,500. The 90th percentile reaches $307,500. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Engineering Manager ($275,000) and AI Safety ($274,200). By seniority level: Entry: $97,880; Mid: $165,000; Senior: $227,400; Director: $247,800; VP: $250,000.
Mariana Minerals AI Hiring
Mariana Minerals has 3 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Positions span Ann Arbor, MI, US, San Francisco, CA, US, Houston, TX, US. Compensation range: $160K - $240K.
Location Context
AI roles in San Francisco pay a median of $253,000 across 2,168 tracked positions. That's 26% above the national median.
Career Path
Common paths into AI/ML Engineer roles include Data Scientist, Software Engineer, Research Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer.
The fastest path into ML engineering is through software engineering with a self-directed ML education. A CS degree helps, but production engineering skills matter more than academic credentials. Build something that works, deploy it, and measure it. That portfolio project is worth more than a Coursera certificate. For career growth, the fork comes around the senior level: go deep on technical complexity (staff/principal track) or move into managing ML teams.
What to Expect in Interviews
Expect system design questions around ML pipelines: how you'd build a training pipeline for a specific use case, handle data drift, or design A/B testing infrastructure for model deployments. Coding rounds typically involve Python, with emphasis on data manipulation (pandas, numpy) and algorithm implementation. Take-home assignments often ask you to build an end-to-end ML pipeline from raw data to deployed model.
When evaluating opportunities: Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 3,823 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 112 entry-level, 1,798 mid-level, 1,516 senior, and 397 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 15% of the market (590 positions). The remaining 3,217 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $200,100. Top-quartile compensation starts at $253,500. The 90th percentile reaches $307,500. Highest-paying categories: AI Engineering Manager ($275,000 median, 41 roles); AI Safety ($274,200 median, 55 roles); Research Engineer ($260,000 median, 434 roles).
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 3,823 open positions across 15 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,629), Data Scientist (322), AI Software Engineer (279). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (112) are outnumbered by mid-level (1,798) and senior (1,516) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 397 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 15% of all AI roles (590 positions), with 3,217 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $200,100. Top-quartile roles start at $253,500, and the 90th percentile reaches $307,500. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Engineering Manager roles lead at $275,000 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $140,000. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,979 postings), Aws (1,190 postings), Azure (899 postings), Rag (839 postings), Gcp (726 postings), Pytorch (595 postings), Prompt Engineering (595 postings), Claude (540 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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