Data Scientist - Staff or Senior (United Kingdom)

About the role

KoBold Metals is a mineral exploration company using AI to explore for the metals we need for our transition to a low-carbon economy. KoBold’s business is discovering, defining, expanding, and developing mineral resources, and KoBold’s objective is to achieve a step-change improvement in exploration success: we aim to discover more tier 1 resources, faster, and with fewer failures.

KoBold has a global portfolio of more than 50 exploration properties targeting nickel, copper, cobalt, and lithium, which range from 100%-owned to partnerships with both majors, junior explorers, and prospectors.

The Data Scientist will help accelerate KoBold’s mission by building predictive models and applying 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. They will help build a worldwide dataset that underlies our exploration program, with careful attention to identifying and quantifying uncertainty in the data and in their predictions.

The Data Scientist will join an outstanding team of data scientists and engineers and will work closely with KoBold’s world-renowned geoscientists to incorporate their best understanding of the chemical and physical processes that create ore deposits. Working with their geoscience colleagues, they 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 their predictions and guide the next phase of field work.

Ultimately, their 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, they will help build these tools from the ground up.

Responsibilities

• Help develop KoBold’s proprietary software exploration tools.
• Find and curate 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 data processing, statistical, and physics-based techniques to geoscientific data — from computer vision to geophysical inversions — and use the results to guide their targeting efforts and inform their acquisition and exploration decisions.
• Present to and collaborate with their external partners and stakeholders.

Qualifications

• A great 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.
• Cloud computing resources.
• Building predictive models, applying them to different problems, and evaluating and interpreting the results.
• Data from a variety of physical systems.
• Geospatial analyses and visualizations.
• Technical knowledge:
• Broad skills in and knowledge of applied statistics and Bayesian inference
• Substantial understanding of machine learning algorithms
• Training and work experience:
• An advanced degree in the physical sciences, engineering, computer science, or mathematics.
• A minimum work experience of 4 years post PhD or 8 years post MS, ideally as a data scientist or data engineer.
• Experience leading technical teams to apply novel scientific approaches to core business problems
• Work practices and motivation:
• Ability to take ownership and responsibility of large projects.
• Ability to explain technical problems to and collaborate on solutions with domain experts.
• Communicates well on a collaborative, cross-functional team.
• 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.
• Intellectual curiosity and eagerness to learn about all aspects of mineral exploration, particularly in the geology domain.
• Enjoys constantly learning such that they are driving insights through using our tools in exploration and willing to work directly with geologists in the field.
• 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.
• 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
• KoBold Metals is an equal opportunity workplace and an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity for people of any race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, age, citizenship, disability, or veteran status.
• This position is Full-time Exempt.
• The US base salary range for this full-time exempt position is $140,00 - $240,000 (USD) plus equity and benefits.
• Location: KoBold is a remote-first workplace. All candidates must be legally authorized to work in one of the following countries: United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, United Kingdom, Zambia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Namibia, Finland, Sweden, or Botswana.