Blank Metal is an AI-native engineering company that partners with enterprises to deliver production AI fast. Our approach combines strategic thinking with rapid implementation, ensuring AI initiatives deliver measurable business value.

We are expanding our team and seeking a Senior AI/ML Engineer to join our Minneapolis office. This role will focus on architecting, developing, and deploying advanced machine-learning and AI-driven solutions for a variety of clients across multiple industries. We serve clients across multiple industries so you can be guaranteed the variety that may be missing from your current environment, along with interesting projects!

You will be joining a seasoned professional services team who excel at providing high-touch, quality, memorable services that move the needle for companies. Our office is filled with open conversations that get us to the best solution. We want to hear your voice as we evolve our services. You’ll also find our office infused with laughter, so bring your jovial nature and entrepreneurial spirit and join us on our journey.

Our office is headquartered in Minneapolis, MN and we offer a hybrid working model. This role is not eligible for visa sponsorship. Read on to learn what you will do in your new role!

Key responsibilities for Sr AI/ML Engineer role:

Solution Design

• Translate business or product goals into model architecture choices; select features, loss functions, evaluation metrics.
• Design scalable service/micro-service patterns, database schemas, caching layers, auth flows.

Hands-on Development

• Implement and optimize models, craft data pipelines, and expose inference APIs.
• Ship production code across front-end and back-end with comprehensive test coverage.
• Consume model endpoints, handle real-time inference, manage error-handling & fallbacks.
• Drive code-review rigor, CI pipelines, and observability instrumentation.
• Pair-program, run brown-bag sessions, and advise on tech choices for junior engineers.
• Partner with UX/Product, AI/ML Practice and ML Ops to deliver on projects.
• Contribute to building engineering best practices and raising the team’s engineering bar.

Production Readiness

• Collaborate with MLOps to containerize models, define SLOs, add drift detection & auto-retraining hooks.

Client/Stakeholder Alignment

• Present findings, justify model choices, and iterate rapidly on feedback.

Qualification and skills for success in the role:

• 5–8 years of ML engineering or applied data science experience, including at least one production system in cloud/Kubernetes.
• Advanced proficiency in Python & ML frameworks, plus solid statistics/experimentation skills.
• Designed/operated systems in AWS/GCP/Azure with IaC (Terraform/CDK).
• Solid grasp of security, performance tuning, and API versioning best practices.
• Comfortable in dynamic, client-facing environments—startup or consulting experience is ideal.

Equal Employment Opportunity

We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer and welcome our employee’s differences, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, or Veteran status. Difference makes us better. Join us.