Computational Hydrogeologist

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 Price and Canada Pension Plan Investments; technology venture capitalists Andreessen Horowitz, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, BOND Capital, Durable Capital, StepStone, and Standard Investments; and natural resources companies Equinor, BHP, and Mitsubishi. About the Role In this role, you will own the computation hydrogeology program for KoBold’s exploration projects, including pre-feasibility and feasibility engineering studies. You will help to create water management strategies that maximize the safety, feasibility, and value of future mines. Working closely with field hydrogeologists, mining engineers, and computational scientists, you will lead the development and execution of numerical simulations necessary for quantitative evaluation of the strategies you develop. Your analyses and groundwater flow models will be an integral component of KoBold’s dynamic mine-planning and mine-operations technology. You will join an outstanding team of geoscientists, data scientists, and software engineers. You will be a core part of the project teams, advancing the science and practice of exploration. In addition to contributing to the development of novel data collection programs, you will work closely with geologists and data scientists to build physics-based and data-driven models of the hydrogeology of our exploration sites. A key challenge will be to quantify uncertainties relevant to mining, and to identify efficient means for reducing these uncertainties as the project advances. Responsibilities The Computational Hydrogeologist will: Develop multiple alternative groundwater management strategies and quality metrics Identify data and information needed to evaluate the efficacy of a proposed strategy, differentiate the system response from other possible strategies, and compare the strengths and weaknesses of various water management actions Design data collection programs required to inform evaluation analyses and work with field teams to develop methodologies for execution Build and run computational analyses, including numerical simulations of groundwater flow, post-processing algorithms for hydrogeologic insights, and uncertainty quantification Work with data scientists to develop novel approaches and tools to extract value from results Qualifications A great Hydrogeologist candidate will have: Bachelor's or post-graduate degree in hydrogeology, geology, computational geoscience, geological or environmental engineering, or closely related discipline 6-10 year