Staff AI / Machine Learning Engineer

Blackbird.AI helps organizations detect and understand emergent threats through our AI-powered Narrative and Risk Intelligence Platform. We build systems that surface, contextualize, and explain complex information ecosystems so customers can make informed decisions in high-stakes environments. We are a fast-growth start-up recognized as the undisputed leader in the Narrative Intelligence market that we created. We are mission-driven high performers looking to welcome like-minded individuals to our team.

As a Staff AI / Machine Learning Engineer, you will design and build production-grade AI systems that combine large language models, machine learning, and structured data. You will focus on turning advanced AI capabilities into reliable, explainable, and scalable platform features, working closely with data and backend engineers to ensure real-world performance and trustworthiness.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role for engineers who enjoy shipping complex AI systems—not just experimenting with models.

What You’ll Do

• Build and operate production-grade AI systems that combine machine learning, large language models, and structured data
• Translate ambiguous problem spaces into reliable, explainable AI capabilities that customers can trust
• Apply machine learning and AI techniques to graph-structured and networked data, enabling reasoning over entities, relationships, and complex information structures
• Design AI systems with strong guarantees around correctness, transparency, and performance
• Partner with data and backend engineers to bring AI capabilities into scalable platform services
• Evaluate, iterate, and improve AI systems using both quantitative metrics and real-world feedback
• Make thoughtful trade-offs across model quality, latency, cost, and system complexity
• Own AI components end-to-end, from initial design through deployment and long-term maintenance
• Provide technical leadership through design reviews, mentorship, and shared best practices.