AI/ML Engineer

Reliever, Inc.; Minneapolis (MN); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Reliever, Inc. is hiring its first engineering hire to own the codebase and platform. The role embeds with Blank Metal, learning the harness architecture, and preparing for a clean handoff.

You’ll eventually own the platform, AI systems, and the development roadmap as Reliever builds an AI-native fintech solution for nonprofits. This hybrid role is based in Minnesota, with teammates in the Minneapolis area.

Qualifications

• A strong software engineering foundation with production AI/ML experience.
• Fluency in AI-native development practices.
• Experience collaborating with external or distributed engineering teams.
• Experience in a startup or early-stage environment.
• A pragmatic engineering sensibility.

Responsibilities

• Embed with Blank Metal during the initial product build, contributing production code and working fluently within the harness architecture of agent-driven development, specifications, automated tests, and human review.
• Lead the technical handoff: absorb the architecture, the harness, and the operational runbooks so that ownership transfers to Reliever without losing velocity.
• Own post-handoff development end to end, including architecture decisions, the release process, code quality, and the engineering roadmap.
• Hold the platform to fintech-grade standards for reliability, security, and data protection.
• Integrate and maintain our banking-as-a-service, card issuing, and accounting integrations as the platform grows.

Skills

AI/ML experience

AI-native dev

External collaboration

Startup experience

Pragmatic engineering

Job description

Reliever is the back office for youth sports. Backed and co-founded by Rally Ventures, we are building a purpose-built financial operating system for the volunteer-run nonprofit associations that power community sports across America. These organizations move hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year through dues, fundraisers, sponsorships, and charitable gambling, all managed by volunteers on nights and weekends.

These associations carry real financial complexity: dozens of team bank accounts, contractor payments, Form 990 and UBIT obligations, state gambling compliance, and board-level fiduciary duty. Yet they are too small to afford professional financial staff, and the tools they use today were never designed for them: spreadsheets, personal QuickBooks files, email chains, and paper checks. Reliever replaces that patchwork with one platform that combines modern software, embedded banking, and professional accounting services, so every board can prove every dollar reached the kids.

We are a funded, pre-seed-stage company launching with anchor design partners in the Minnesota hockey market in the second half of 2026. You would join as one of the first hires on the founding team, working directly with the CEO and leadership.

This is a hybrid role based in Minnesota, working from our Minneapolis office. Candidates must currently reside in the Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area. This role is not eligible for visa sponsorship.

THE ROLE

You will be Reliever’s first engineering hire and the future owner of its codebase. The initial product build is underway with our development partner, Blank Metal, using a harness architecture in which AI agents do much of the building inside a framework of specifications, tests, and human review. You will embed with the Blank Metal team from day one, contributing to the build, learning the architecture from the inside, and preparing for a clean handoff. Once the platform transitions in-house, you own it: the codebase, the architecture, the AI systems, and the development roadmap.

This is AI/ML engineering in two senses. The product itself is AI-native, with intelligence in the daily close, transaction categorization, document processing, and compliance logic. And the way we build is AI-native too: Reliever is an AI-first company where every engineer works with agents, and the harness is the development environment, not an experiment. The ideal candidate is a strong software engineer who has shipped production AI systems and wants to own an entire fintech platform, not one service within it.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Build with Blank Metal, then own the platform

• Embed with Blank Metal during the initial product build, contributing production code and working fluently within the harness architecture of agent-driven development, specifications, automated tests, and human review
• Lead the technical handoff: absorb the architecture, the harness, and the operational runbooks so that ownership transfers to Reliever without losing velocity
• Own post-handoff development end to end, including architecture decisions, the release process, code quality, and the engineering roadmap
• Hold the platform to fintech-grade standards for reliability, security, and data protection. This system moves real money for real communities and supports SOC 2 readiness
• Integrate and maintain our banking-as-a-service, card issuing, and accounting integrations as the platform grows

Build the AI core

• Design, ship, and improve the AI/ML systems at the heart of the product: transaction categorization, automated reconciliation, the AI daily close, document extraction for receipts and tax forms, and compliance logic for nonprofit filings
• Build the evaluation, guardrail, and human-in-the-loop patterns that let AI operate safely in a financial system of record
• Extend the harness itself: better agent workflows, better tests, better tooling, so the platform gets easier to build on over time
• Orchestrate your own pod of AI agents for development support, consistent with Reliever’s AI-first operating model in which every human hire is amplified by agents
• Partner with our founding Product Manager and founding CPA to turn accounting expertise and user stories into working software

WHAT YOU BRING

• A strong software engineering foundation with production AI/ML experience. You have shipped systems that use LLMs, agents, or ML models in production, and you can build the conventional software around them just as well
• Fluency in AI-native development practices. You use AI agents and AI-assisted coding as a core part of how you work, and you are comfortable operating inside an agent harness with specs, evals, and automated tests
• Experience collaborating with external or distributed engineering teams, and the judgment to take ownership of a codebase you did not start
• Experience in a startup or early-stage environment. You are energized by ambiguity, comfortable create process rather than inheriting it, and biased to ship
• A pragmatic engineering sensibility. You choose boring technology where it belongs, apply AI where it earns its place, and write code others can maintain

NICE TO HAVE

• A genuine passion for youth sports, or experience volunteering with youth sports organizations. You understand the people this product serves
• Experience improving professional services with AI, in fields such as accounting, legal, or tax
• Fintech experience, especially banking-as-a-service platforms, card issuing, payments, or ledger systems
• Familiarity with accounting data, bookkeeping automation, or document-heavy ML problems such as OCR and extraction

WHY THIS ROLE IS DIFFERENT

• Founding-team seat at a venture-backed company co-founded with Rally Ventures, with your fingerprints on the architecture, the product, and the company itself
• Full ownership of an entire AI-native fintech platform, inherited at handoff and yours to grow, a scope most engineers wait a decade to reach
• A mission that matters in your own community, giving volunteers their nights and weekends back and protecting the money families entrust to youth sports