Senior ML Architect Contractor

Backblaze is the object storage leader in the open cloud movement, fueling customer success with cloud storage built purposefully to unlock budgets, unburden administrators, and unleash innovators. Together with our partners, we’re helping customers break free from the restrictive, overpriced legacy solutions that hold them back, and blaze forward with the full power of the open cloud in their hands.

Founded in 2007, we scaled the business with less than $3 million in outside funding until 2021, when we did a traditional IPO on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Today, Backblaze generates over $100m in revenue and is the leading specialized storage cloud - managing over three billion gigabytes of data storage for 500K+ customers in 175+ countries, including businesses, developers, IT professionals, and individuals.

But while there is a lot to celebrate in our past, there is almost as much opportunity ahead of us. We're seeking a Senior ML Architect Contractor!

What you'll be doing:

As a Senior ML Architect Contractor, your primary focus will be providing strategic guidance on ML architecture design and implementation for production environments. Responsibilities include:

• Advising on the architectural design and strategy of scalable ML pipelines for production deployment.
• Collaborating with application and data engineering teams to design and build effective data pipelines that support ML workflows.
• Partnering closely with the data science team to ensure smooth transitions of anomaly detection models from experimentation to reliable production environments.
• Guiding effective integration and use of Snowflake for ML workloads, data management, and infrastructure optimization.
• Mentoring data science interns and junior team members, offering guidance on best practices for ML development and deployment.
• Ensuring the adoption of best practices for performance monitoring, logging, model lifecycle management, reliability, and continuous improvement of ML architectures.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Extensive experience in designing and advising on ML architectures for production.
• Familiarity with Snowflake for efficient data warehousing and ML workflows.
• Proficiency in Python and familiarity with ML frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn).
• Deep understanding of production-grade ML model deployment, optimization strategies, and infrastructure considerations.
• Experience mentoring data science teams and clearly communicating technical guidance and architectural decisions.
• PhD (or current enrollment in a PhD program) in AI, Machine Learning, Computer Science, or a related field is required.

Position duration and location: 3-months, Remote

At this point, we hope you're feeling excited about the job description you're reading. Even if you don't meet every requirement, we still encourage you to apply. Learning, developing, and growing are key parts of our culture. We're eager to meet people who believe in our mission and can contribute to our team in various ways. We want people to feel comfortable expressing their true selves and to come, stay, and do their best work here.
At Backblaze, we value being fair and good to our customers, partners, and employees. That’s why diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the core of our values. We are committed to fostering a workforce where all employees feel a sense of belonging regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, socio-economic status, ability, veteran status, and education. We believe that our dedication to cultivating a diverse workspace not only allows us to better serve our customers in over 175 countries, but further reinforces our commitment to doing the right thing. We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer.

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