Staff Machine Learning Engineer

Mariana Minerals is building the critical minerals supply chain from the ground up-and we’re looking for a Staff Machine Learning Engineer 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 Staff Machine Learning Engineer at Mariana, you’ll set the technical direction for how we make refining autonomous. You’ll define how control models are built, validated, and trusted on live equipment across our circuits and facilities-and you’ll personally take on the hardest modeling problems standing between us and fully autonomous operations. Your decisions will show up in real recovery rates, energy consumption, reagent usage, and uptime across every plant we run., * Own the autonomy roadmap across multiple circuits and facilities-deciding which unit operations to automate next and where investment in simulation and modeling pays off.

• Define how control models are validated and certified safe to deploy on real refining equipment, including how the gap between simulation and reality is measured and closed.
• Set the standards for our simulators and our modeling stack, so the whole team builds controllers that are reproducible, safe, and grounded in real project economics.
• Personally solve the hardest modeling and control problems-non-stationarity, safety constraints, and multi-objective optimization across recovery, reagent use, energy, and uptime.
• Partner with leadership on major capital and operational decisions, translating techno-economic and process insight into strategy.
• Multiply the team through technical direction, design review, and mentoring of engineers at every level-and partner with our data engineering leaders to shape the data platform the autonomy roadmap requires. You own the modeling and the on-plant outcome; they own the backbone.

Do you have experience in System design?, * 8+ years in machine learning engineering (or an exceptional 6+ with demonstrated org-level technical leadership), including production ML or control systems that ran in the real world.

• A track record of setting technical direction for ML systems in physical, industrial, robotics, or control domains.
• Deep expertise in reinforcement learning under non-stationarity, simulation and digital twins, and closing sim-to-real gaps-plus the judgment to know when a simpler approach wins.
• Demonstrated ability to de-risk ambiguous, never-been-done problems: framing the objective, the success metric, and the path for others.
• Strong cross-functional influence with both technical leadership and domain experts-chemists, metallurgists, process engineers, and geologists.
• A builder at heart. Staff engineers here still ship.

$160,000 - $200,000 a year - Full-time, 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: $160K - $200K

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., 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. This is a role for someone who wants to set the technical direction of an entire industrial-AI platform while it’s still being invented-not maintain one that already exists.