Principal Data Scientist

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, and Standard Investments; and natural resources companies Equinor, BHP, and Mitsubishi.

We are hiring a Principal Data Scientist to help accelerate our mission.

About the position

In this role, you will build predictive models and apply a wide range of scientific computing, statistical, and physics-based methods to find places where there is evidence of ore-forming processes at work and to predict the locations of ore-grade mineralization in 2D and 3D. 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 create models and develop software 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 create 2D and 3D geologic predictions, 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 building data tools to solve scientific problems. As one of the early members of this team, you will help build these tools from the ground up.

Responsibilities

The Principal Data Scientist will:

• Help develop KoBold’s proprietary software exploration tools.
• Find and curate a wide variety of geospectral, geophysical, geochemical, geologic, and geographic data and integrate it into KoBold’s proprietary data system.
• Build models to make statistically valid predictions about the locations of compositional anomalies within the Earth’s crust.
• Create effective visualizations for evaluating model performance and enabling rapid interaction with the underlying data and key features.
• Develop and apply a range of data processing, statistical, and physics-based techniques to geoscientific data — from computer vision to geophysical inversions — and use the results to guide our targeting efforts and inform our acquisition and exploration decisions.
• Present to and collaborate with our external partners and stakeholders.

Qualifications

A great Principal  Data Scientist candidate will have:

Technical skills, including extensive experience with:

• Python’s data science packages and general software engineering practices.
• Collaborative software development (git), and familiarity with software engineering best practices like unit test / integration test suites, and CICD pipelines.
• SQL, as well as familiarity with non-relational databases.
• Cloud computing resources.
• Building a wide variety of predictive models, applying them to different problems, and evaluating and interpreting the results.
• Working with a broad range of types of data including data from physical systems.
• Geospatial analyses and visualizations.

Technical knowledge:

• Broad skills in and knowledge of applied statistics
• Substantial understanding of Machine Learning algorithms

Training and work experience:

• An advanced degree in the physical sciences, engineering, computer science, or mathematics.
• 10 years of post-degree work experience as a data scientist or data engineer. KoBold is willing to consider candidates at the Data Scientist, Senior Data Scientist, or Staff Data Scientist levels, with commensurate compensation, however recent bachelor’s/master’s candidates are unlikely to be competitive.

Work practices and motivation:

• Ability to take ownership and responsibility of large projects.
• 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.
• 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.

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

• Creating machine learning models on geospatial data
• Geostatistics
• Image processing or computer vision
• Distributed computing applications for machine learning and other computations
• Containerization solutions

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.

Location: Location: KoBold is a remote first workplace, we are open to candidates currently residing anywhere in the United States or Canada. All candidates must be authorized to legally work in either the United States or Canada.

The US base salary range for this full-time exempt position is $225,000 - $265,000.