The mining industry has become increasingly challenging, requiring more capital to find new ore deposits. KoBold Metals builds AI models for mineral exploration and deploys them alongside novel sensors to guide decisions on its exploration programs.

About the Role

In the role of Field Operations Lead, you will plan and execute our field activities in Finland to meet our business objectives without causing harm to our people, contractors, and communities. You will report to our Field Operations Director North America & Europe and other members of the operations and exploration team.

Responsibilities

• Plan and lead complex exploration projects and moderate-scale development programs in Finland, including drilling campaigns, electromagnetic surveys, and reconnaissance programs
• Lead 1–3 concurrent projects of varying size, complexity, and jurisdiction, with accountability for planning and execution
• Lead procurement strategies: contractor selection, bid evaluation, benchmarking, and contract administration for Finland-based programs
• Develop detailed project-level risk and hazard identification, risk assessments, mitigation plans, and critical control implementation, with particular attention to Finnish winter construction conditions
• Lead project kick-offs with integrated teams and contractors, covering scope, execution strategy, and risk management
• Contribute collaboratively to data collection planning during Phase 4a of the Exploration Project Lifecycle
• Generate creative field operations scenarios outside conventional boundaries that lead to efficient programs

Execute

• Lead end-to-end execution of assigned projects from mobilization through demobilization and closure
• Provide strong leadership during changing field conditions, including Arctic and sub-Arctic weather events
• Track and forecast production rates, spend profiles, and resource requirements
• Manage and direct all field activities: lead contractor performance evaluation, feedback, and improvement
• Maintain daily contact with and monitor the status of KoBold personnel and contractors while in the field; maintain close communication with the Project Geologist, Project Data Scientist, and the Senior Project Planner

Close

• Lead site remediation and rehabilitation activities per Finnish regulatory standards
• Lead contractor performance reviews and lessons learned to drive continuous improvement

Compliance and Stakeholder Engagement

• Lead execution within regulatory compliance, monitoring, and reporting in accordance with Finnish mining and environmental legislation (including the Mining Act 621/2011 and Environmental Protection Act), EU regulations, and the practices of our joint venture partners
• Ensure execution is done within Finnish permitting processes, land access agreements, community relations, third-party agreements, and any joint venture requirements
• With leadership direction and support, represent KoBold Metals with local Finnish stakeholders, including communities, landowners, municipal authorities, and environmental bodies

Process Improvement and Mentoring

• Create ways of working that allow us to continue to work more effectively and to be nimble so that we can support machine-learning-driven dynamic field programs, where we adapt our plan based on the data we collect at each stage
• Mentor Field Operations Supervisors: ensure field operations follows KoBold’s systems, practices, and leading industry standards

Qualifications

• At least 12 years of experience conducting field operations in mineral exploration and mining, oil and gas, or a related industry, with demonstrated progression in complexity and responsibility
• Advanced knowledge of construction methodology, including winter and frozen-ground construction (tracks, pads, ice roads) relevant to Nordic operating environments
• Advanced understanding of helicopter-supported exploration, including utilization optimization and emergency response considerations
• Strong understanding of procurement processes: RFP development, bid evaluation, and contract administration
• Strong understanding of rehabilitation and closure planning
• Demonstrated commitment to health and safety standards, including incident management, root cause analysis, and corrective action implementation and verification
• Strong conceptual knowledge of all HSE, Land and Permitting, Legal, and Business Development systems as applied to exploration projects
• Ability to manage and supervise KoBold staff and contractors on all aspects of field activities, including complex and higher-risk field programs
• Ability to design complex field programs including scope, cost estimates, risk assessments, procurement, and project execution plans
• Ability to prepare complete and accurate deliverables based on the Exploration Project Lifecycle and synthesize findings for integrated project teams and leadership
• Ability to work in remote and isolated locations for extended periods of time, including Finnish Lapland and other Nordic environments
• A high degree of independence and the ability to work effectively with limited supervision
• Must speak, read, and write in Finnish and English; additional language skills are of benefit
• Valid First Aid Certification (Level 3 or Wilderness First Aid preferred)

Preferred

• Recognized internally or externally as a subject matter expert in field operations across at least two operation types (e.g., drilling, EM surveys, civil works)
• Material understanding of data science products (e.g., catchment analyses) and their appropriate uses in exploration
• Experience with Finnish and/or Nordic regulatory frameworks governing exploration operations
• Experience working on projects with dedicated exploration teams including both Geologists and Data Scientists, demonstrating sustained partnership and effective interdisciplinary collaboration
• Familiarity with project management principles and managing projects remotely across multiple jurisdictions
• Experience with logistics tied to complex remote operations in cold-weather environments, including helicopter, weather, camps, chartered

XML job scraping automation by YubHub

In the role of Field Operations Lead, you will plan and execute our field activities across North America to meet our business objectives without causing harm to our people, our contractors and partners, or the communities and environments where we operate.

Responsibilities

Plan - Lead planning of complex exploration projects and moderate-scale development programs in North America, including drilling campaigns, electromagnetic surveys, and reconnaissance programs

Lead 1–3 concurrent projects of varying size, complexity, and jurisdiction, with accountability for planning and execution

Lead procurement strategies: contractor selection, bid evaluation, benchmarking, and contract administration for North America-based programs

Develop detailed project-level risk and hazard identification, risk assessments, mitigation plans, and critical control implementation, with particular attention to seasonal and terrain-specific construction conditions across North American operating environments

Lead project kick-offs with integrated teams and contractors, covering scope, execution strategy, and risk management

Generate creative field operations scenarios outside conventional boundaries that lead to efficient programs

Execute

Lead end-to-end execution of assigned projects from mobilization through demobilization and closure

Provide strong leadership during changing field conditions, including remote, seasonal, and extreme weather events across diverse North American geographies

Track and forecast production rates, spend profiles, and resource requirements

Manage and direct all field activities: lead contractor performance evaluation, feedback, and improvement

Maintain daily contact with and monitor the status of KoBold personnel and contractors while in the field; maintain close communication with the Project Geologist, Project Data Scientist, and the Senior Project Planner

Close

Lead site remediation and rehabilitation activities per applicable federal, state/provincial, and local regulatory standards

Lead contractor performance reviews and lessons learned to drive continuous improvement

Compliance and Stakeholder Engagement

Lead execution within regulatory compliance, monitoring, and reporting in accordance with applicable US federal and state or Canadian federal and provincial mining, environmental, and land use legislation, and the practices of our joint venture partners

Ensure execution is done within applicable permitting processes, land access agreements, community relations, third-party agreements, and any joint venture requirements

With leadership direction and support, represent KoBold Metals with local North American stakeholders, including communities, landowners, municipal authorities, Indigenous groups, and environmental bodies

Qualifications

At least 12 years of experience conducting field operations in mineral exploration and mining, oil and gas, or a related industry, with demonstrated progression in complexity and responsibility

Advanced knowledge of construction methodology, including seasonal and terrain-specific construction (tracks, pads, access roads) relevant to North American operating environments

Advanced understanding of helicopter-supported exploration, including utilization optimization and emergency response considerations

Strong understanding of procurement processes: RFP development, bid evaluation, and contract administration

Strong understanding of reclamation, rehabilitation and closure planning

Demonstrated commitment to health and safety standards, including incident management, root cause analysis, and corrective action implementation and verification

Strong conceptual knowledge of HSE, Land and Permitting, Legal, and Business Development systems as applied to exploration projects

Ability to manage and supervise KoBold staff and contractors on all aspects of field activities, including complex and higher-risk field programs

Ability to design complex field programs including scope, cost estimates, risk assessments, procurement, and project execution plans

Ability to work in remote and isolated locations for extended periods of time across North American environments

A high degree of independence and the ability to work effectively with limited supervision

Must speak, read, and write in English; additional language skills (including French) are of benefit

Valid First Aid Certification (Level 3 or Wilderness First Aid preferred)

Preferred

Experience with US federal and state or Canadian federal and provincial regulatory frameworks governing exploration operations

Experience working on projects with dedicated exploration teams including both Geologists and Data Scientists, demonstrating sustained partnership and effective interdisciplinary collaboration

Familiarity with project management principles and managing projects remotely across multiple jurisdictions

Experience with logistics tied to complex remote operations, including helicopter, weather, camps, chartered flights, and drilling operations

French language skills are an asset for projects in Quebec or other francophone regions

What We Value

Effective communication with team members across Geology, Data Science, HSE, Aviation, Legal, Community Relations, and Land and Permitting

Perpetuating KoBold’s ethical standards through your own actions and in communicating with others

Leading constructive field operational dialogue with colleagues; offering ideas freely and being willing to be wrong

Receiving constructive and critical feedback well and providing constructive input and guidance to others

Recognizing and elevating the team’s contributions, both in the field and to leadership, reinforcing a culture where strong work is visible and valued

Interest in contributing beyond your role and responsibilities

XML job scraping automation by YubHub

Responsibilities:

• Architect, implement, and maintain decision science libraries that will be used in KoBold's mineral exploration analyses.
• Build tooling to increase the velocity of our decision making, including enabling rapid prototyping in Jupyter notebooks; build experimentation, evaluation, and simulation frameworks; turning successful R&D into robust, scalable pipelines; and organizing ML models and their outputs for repeatability and discoverability.
• Apply–and coach team members to use–engineering best practices such as writing robust, testable and composable code
• Collaborate with data scientists, geoscientists and engineers to invent the modern decision science technology for mineral exploration
• Occasional travel to exploration sites around the world to observe the impact of scientific computing on KoBold's exploration products and design new technologies to further discovery. Travel is approximately twice per year depending on project needs.

Qualifications:

• At least 5 years of experience in the field of decision science with a strong software engineering focus, though most great candidates will have closer to 10.
• Track record of building production quality data processing solutions or tooling that have delivered business value
• Proficiency with foundational concepts of ML, including statistical, traditional and deep-learning approaches
• Proficiency in Python, ideally including array-based packages such as xarray and numpy
• Deep experience with measured scientific data
• Experience in visualizing scientific data for domain experts
• Experience in MLops and in the making of robust ML systems
• Drive to increase the velocity and effectiveness of our data scientists in both experimental and production workflows
• Capacity to dive deep on novel challenging problems in applying decision science to mineral exploration, including understanding a complex domain of geology and mineral exploration practices as well as working with limited, disparate and noisy data sources
• Collaborative attitude to work with stakeholders with different backgrounds (data scientists, geoscientists, software engineers, operations)

Work practices and motivation:

• Ability to take ownership and responsibility of large projects.
• Intellectual curiosity and eagerness to learn about all aspects of mineral exploration, particularly in the geology domain. Open to working directly with geologists in the field. Enjoys constantly learning such that you are driving insights and innovations.
• Ability to explain technical problems to and collaborate on solutions with domain experts who aren’t software developers. A strong communicator who enjoys working with colleagues across the company.
• Excitement about joining a fast-growing early-stage company, comfort with a dynamic work environment, and eagerness to take on a range of responsibilities.
• Keen not just to build cool technology, but to figure out what technical product to build to best achieve the business objectives of the company.
• Ability to independently prioritize multiple tasks effectively.

XML job scraping automation by YubHub

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. KoBold Metals builds AI models for mineral exploration and deploys those models,alongside our novel sensors,to guide decisions on KoBold-owned-and-operated exploration programs.

About The Role: In this role, you will partner with exploration and engineering teams to build reliable, scalable infrastructure that makes it easier to turn data and models into real-world exploration insights. You will improve observability, streamline MLOps workflows, and maintain shared tools like JupyterHub that enable faster experimentation and collaboration. Your work will help create a solid foundation for scientists and engineers to focus on discovery instead of infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate compute infrastructure that is both scalable and reliable to support critical services.
• Work closely with engineering teams to embed observability, reliability, and security throughout the software development process.
• Create and maintain automation for monitoring, deployments, and incident response to keep operations efficient and predictable.
• Lead or support capacity planning, performance reviews, and system tuning to ensure stable and efficient systems.
• Join the on-call rotation and take part in incident response, troubleshooting, and resolution.
• Develop and refine monitoring and alerting to catch issues early and reduce downtime.
• Establish and maintain disaster recovery and business continuity practices that protect the organization against failures.
• Regularly review and improve our tools and processes to strengthen system visibility and reliability.
• Investigate points of fragility in distributed systems and understand how complex systems behave under stress in order to improve resilience.
• Continually learn about mineral exploration through reading, discussions with exploration team members, periodic rotation on an exploration team and time in the field with geologists

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience as an Infrastructure Engineer, Site Reliability Engineer or in a similar role
• Strong scripting and programming skills (Python, Go, Java or JavaScript/ Node.js )
• Experience with IaC tools like Terraform and container orchestration tools like Kubernetes and Docker
• Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS
• Experience operating or administering JupyterHub in a multi-user environment
• Understanding of MLOps workflows, including model training, deployment, and related tooling
• Excellent communication & collaboration skills and a continuous improvement mindset
• Proven ability to troubleshoot complex issues and implement effective solutions
• Proven ability to thrive in dynamic and evolving environments, effectively navigating uncertainty and incomplete information.
• Proven ability to grow expertise, influence & educate others
• Comfortable making informed decisions with limited data, adapting quickly to new circumstances, and maintaining focus on strategic objectives while driving clarity for the team.
• Intellectual curiosity and eagerness to learn about all aspects of mineral exploration, particularly in the geology domain. Enjoys constantly learning such that you are driving insights through using our tools in exploration and willing to work directly with geologists in the field.
• Ability to explain technical problems to and collaborate on solutions with domain experts who are not infrastructure engineers. A strong communicator who enjoys working with colleagues across the company.
• Excitement about joining a fast-growing early-stage company, comfort with a dynamic work environment, and eagerness to take on an evolving range of responsibilities.
• Keen not just to build cool technology, but to figure out what technical product to build to best achieve the business objectives of the company.

XML job scraping automation by YubHub

This role will drive the design, development, and deployment of a next-generation hardware technology that will transform how KoBold collects and interprets exploration data. This role is ideal for a mechanical engineer who thrives at the intersection of science, engineering, and data and is excited about bringing new technology to life.

In this role, you will lead the full technical lifecycle of a critical new hardware system: from concept and prototyping through validation, automation, manufacturing, and deployment in the field. You will work closely with our data scientists, engineers, and geoscientists to design instrumentation that produces rich, high-quality datasets, feeding the machine learning models that drive KoBold’s mineral exploration around the world. You will be a key member of a hardware development team and contributor to various novel hardware projects.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical development of a novel, automated sensing and imaging system from concept and prototype to deployment of multiple systems in remote field sites. Coordinate with and orchestrate internal and external resources across hardware and software engineering to deliver.
• Lead system architecture definition, navigating technical tradeoffs through rigorous research and analysis and balancing cost, complexity, and timeline.
• Collaborate with KoBold's data systems and exploration teams to integrate the new data stream into KoBold's proprietary data system and ensure usability for exploration projects.
• Build a deep understanding of mineral exploration science and operations to ensure the system and data generated meet user needs and field requirements.
• Build partnerships, source, and contract with service providers and vendors to develop hardware solutions that solve KoBold exploration needs.
• Create effective product plans and mechanical, mechatronic and automation designs - from concept through prototyping and production.
• Contribute engineering expertise, analysis, and design to various hardware projects across Kobold.
• Help develop Kobold’s hardware development tools and processes.

Qualifications

A great Hardware Development Engineer candidate will have:

• A successful track record of developing and deploying complex state-of-the-art automated scientific equipment.
• Experience deploying and supporting complex equipment to remote sites including commissioning, validation, training and monitoring.
• The ability to simultaneously and gracefully wear many hats including technical lead, project manager, product manager, and hands on in-the-weeds engineer.
• Excellent communication skills for a highly interdisciplinary workplace.

Technical skills, including extensive experience with:

• Leading teams to execute end-to-end technical product development from concept through testing and deployment.
• Physical measurement and data analysis systems.
• Applying scientific knowledge to identify and prototype emerging technologies.
• Automation, systems integration and data acquisition.
• Mechanical engineering, CAD, analysis, prototyping.
• Vendor selection and management.
• 3rd party contractor selection and management.

Work practices and motivation:

• Ability and desire to take ownership and responsibility of large projects.
• Enjoys constantly learning such that you are driving insights and innovations.
• Ability to explain technical problems to and collaborate on solutions with domain experts who aren’t hardware experts.
• 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.
• Solutions oriented, positive, and collaborative.

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

• Product management for scientific hardware.
• Optics, electronics, and instrumentation.
• Intellectual curiosity and eagerness to learn about all aspects of mineral exploration, particularly in the geology domain. Enjoys constantly learning such that you are driving insights through using our tools in exploration and willing to work directly with geologists in the field.
• Ability to explain technical problems to and collaborate on solutions with domain experts who are not hardware engineers. A strong communicator who enjoys working with colleagues across the company.
• Excitement about joining a fast-growing early-stage company, comfort with a dynamic work environment, and eagerness to take on an evolving range of responsibilities.
• Keen not just to build cool technology, but to figure out what technical product to build to best achieve the business objectives of the company.
• A valid passport and willingness to travel to observe our work at Mingomba or at an exploration site around the world. Travel for this role typically does not exceed 2 trips per year.

XML job scraping automation by YubHub