Field Operations Engineer

About the company: 

The mining industry has steadily become worse at finding new ore deposits, requiring >10X more capital to make discoveries compared to 30 years ago. The easy-to-find, near-surface deposits have largely been found, and the industry has chronically under-invested in new exploration technology, relying on the manual techniques of yesteryear – even as demand accelerates for copper, lithium, and other metals to build electric vehicles, renewable energy, and data centers.

KoBold builds AI models for mineral exploration and deploys those models—alongside our novel sensors—to guide decisions on KoBold-owned-and-operated exploration programs. In the six years since founding, KoBold has become by far both the largest independent mineral exploration company and the largest exploration technology developer. Our data scientists and software engineers, who come from leading technology companies, jointly lead exploration programs with our renowned exploration geologists.

KoBold has proven its first discovery with materially less capital than the industry average and found one of the best copper deposits ever discovered: the copper is far more concentrated than the global average of copper mines, and this asset alone is expected to generate meaningful revenue for decades. KoBold has a portfolio of more than 60 other projects, each of which has the potential for another high-quality discovery.

KoBold is privately held; investors include institutional asset managers T. Rowe Rice and Canada Pension Plan Investments; technology venture capitalists Andreessen Horowitz, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, BOND Capital, and Standard Investments; and natural resources companies Equinor, BHP, and Mitsubishi.

 About the position

In this role, you will deploy state of the art instruments to collect data to guide our exploration programs. You will prepare, install and calibrate sensors for field operations. Identifying and subsequently working with vendors and partners, you will assemble and test hardware and deploy it in the field. You will carefully evaluate, curate, and process the data from our field programs to assure high data quality. 

You will help build a worldwide dataset that underlies our exploration program, with careful attention to identifying and quantifying uncertainty in the data and in our predictions. You will be enabling new types of analyses and modeling to accelerate discovery of critical battery metals.

You will join an outstanding team of data scientists and engineers and will work closely with KoBold’s world-renowned geoscientists to incorporate our best understanding of the chemical and physical processes that create ore deposits. Working with your geoscience colleagues, you will identify new opportunities and technologies for geophysical data collection, identify exploration targets, design field programs to collect data, and use that data to reduce the uncertainty in our predictions and guide the next phase of field work.

Ultimately, your role is to help KoBold make valuable discoveries by preparing and deploying next generation hardware and using data tools to solve scientific problems. As one of the early members of this team, you will manage both first of a kind and repeated field deployments.

 Responsibilities

The Field Operations Engineer will:

• Prepare, test, calibrate, and deploy new mineral exploration data collection instruments and methods.
• Curate a wide variety of geospectral, geophysical, geochemical, geologic, and geographic data and integrate it into KoBold’s proprietary data system.
• Design and own procedures and checklists for safely and effectively calibrating, installing, and maintaining field hardware.
• Design and build an inventory management system to effectively track, maintain, store, and transport data collection systems.
• Build and maintain relationships with external partners - for example, airborne platform operators. 

Qualifications

A great Field Operations Engineer candidate will have:

• A successful track record of deploying data collection systems in remote locations with cross-disciplinary teams and vendors.

Technical skills, including extensive experience with:

• Physical measurement and data analysis systems that use phenomena such as optics, electromagnetism, radiation, and gravity. 
• Systems integration, data acquisition, and debugging equipment in the lab and the field.
• Python’s data science packages and general software engineering practices.
• Working with and performing first pass analyses with a broad range of data types.

Technical knowledge:

• Broad skills in and knowledge of data acquisition systems and data analysis
• Broad experience working with and configuring Windows and Linux operating systems and the hardware components important for data acquisition and transfer within these systems.

Work practices and motivation:

• Demonstrated ability to quickly absorb and synthesize complex information, with a track record of high intellectual rigor in a professional setting.
• Exceptional curiosity and eagerness to learn, with a proactive approach to exploring new concepts and technologies.
• Ability to take ownership and responsibility of large projects.
• Ability to explain technical problems to and collaborate on solutions with experts across multiple domains.
• Excitement about joining a fast-growing early-stage company, comfort with a dynamic work environment, and eagerness to take on a range of responsibilities.
• Ability to independently prioritize multiple tasks effectively.

Training and work experience:

• An advanced degree in the physical sciences, engineering, computer science, or mathematics, preferred but not required.

It is also helpful but not required to have experience with:

• Electrical, mechanical, or systems engineering
• Image processing or computer vision
• Safety culture and best practices related to field work and/or aviation operations
• Project and team management

KoBold Metals is an equal opportunity workplace and an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunities for people of any race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, or veteran status.

This position is full-time, exempt.

The US base salary range for this full-time exempt position is $100,000-$150,000.

Location: Remote, Candidates can be located anywhere in the United States or Canada. All candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States or Canada.