ML Engineer: RL for Autonomous Mineral Refining

Mariana Minerals; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Mariana Minerals is seeking a Machine Learning Engineer to develop reinforcement learning for autonomous mineral refining controllers. The role bridges simulation and real plants, optimizing lithium recovery, energy use, and uptime while handling real-world constraints.

You will collaborate with process and chemistry experts, ship robust code, and advance training pipelines from simulators toward live deployment in a fast-growing critical minerals company.

Qualifications

• 2–8+ years of experience in machine learning, reinforcement learning, or scientific computing, including internships or research, or a strong recent graduate with demonstrated project depth.
• Solid grounding in machine learning fundamentals and working knowledge of modern deep learning; reinforcement learning exposure is a strong plus.
• Proficiency in Python and comfort reading and debugging an existing codebase.
• Curiosity about physical, industrial systems and willingness to learn chemistry and process engineering from experts who challenge assumptions.
• Self-starter mindset, demonstrated ability to ship, and early escalation of blockers.

Responsibilities

• Run reinforcement learning experiments in physically realistic simulators of mineral processing operations, then use results to improve controllers.
• Build and refine training environment components, including reward functions, observations, and action logic, with guidance from senior engineers.
• Train control models, track and interpret their performance, and investigate causes when models underperform.
• Reduce the simulation-to-reality gap by comparing model behavior against real plant data and flagging where underlying physics diverge.
• Write clean, well-tested code and contribute to services that place models into production.
• Partner with process and chemistry experts to understand the unit operations being modeled.

Skills

Python

Reinforcement Learning

Deep Learning

Tools

RL Toolkits

Job description

Mariana Minerals is seeking a Machine Learning Engineer to develop reinforcement learning for autonomous mineral refining controllers. The role bridges simulation and real plants, optimizing lithium recovery, energy use, and uptime while handling real-world constraints.

You will collaborate with process and chemistry experts, ship robust code, and advance training pipelines from simulators toward live deployment in a fast-growing critical minerals company.