Drilling Engineer, Exploration & Resource Automation
About Mariana Minerals
Mariana Minerals is a software-first, vertically integrated minerals company focused on supplying critical minerals for modern energy, AI, and defense technologies. We aim to reimagine the minerals supply chain through advanced software, automation, and data-driven decision-making.
Role Overview
We are seeking a Drilling Engineer, Exploration & Resource Automation to join our team. This role involves building and implementing automated drilling, sampling, QA/QC, and resource workflows inside MarianaOS. The position requires a strong background in geology, drilling, resource modeling, and resource estimation, with a focus on automating manual workflows and developing better tools for technical teams.
What You’ll Do
Work directly with the software team to design, test, and improve MarianaOS tools for drilling, exploration, sampling, QA/QC, assay review, and resource modeling.
Translate field drilling workflows into product requirements, user stories, data models, automation logic, and practical software specifications.
Help define how technical users should plan drill programs, capture field data, track sample movement, validate assays, and reconcile results inside MarianaOS.
Build and refine workflows that reduce manual spreadsheet work, improve data quality, and make geological and drilling decisions faster and more auditable.
Serve as the domain expert connecting geologists, drillers, resource modelers, field teams, and software engineers.
Help develop automated systems for drill planning, target prioritization, hole design, drill schedule tracking, contractor coordination, and field progress reporting.
Design repeatable logic for comparing planned versus actual drilling outcomes, including drilled meters, productivity, sample recovery, deviations, delays, costs, and geological results.
Identify opportunities to automate recurring decisions and checks across drilling campaigns, including sample interval validation, QA/QC flags, assay status tracking, and field issue escalation.
Partner with technical and software teams to turn field learnings into product improvements that can scale across future Mariana Minerals projects.
Help define and automate end-to-end sample workflows, including sample interval design, labeling, chain of custody, dispatch, lab status tracking, assay receipt, and QA/QC review.
Develop requirements for automated QA/QC checks involving standards, blanks, duplicates, check assays, contamination risks, sample swaps, missing intervals, and out-of-sequence results.
Review drilling and sampling processes in the field and convert those observations into better systems, forms, controls, dashboards, and alerts.
Support automated comparison of drill results against geologic interpretations, resource assumptions, block model predictions, and mineralized domains.
Define variance thresholds, validation logic, exception reports, and follow-up drilling recommendations.
Use assay results, field observations, and model outputs to identify areas where the model is confirmed, contradicted, or needs geological true-up.
Help create repeatable workflows that connect exploration drilling, resource estimation, mine planning, and project development decisions.
Act as a bridge between field users and software developers, ensuring tools are technically sound, usable, and grounded in real exploration and drilling workflows.
Test new MarianaOS features with real project data, identify edge cases, document gaps, and provide actionable feedback to the software team.
Develop templates, process maps, standard operating procedures, dashboards, and training materials for drilling and sampling workflows.
Communicate clearly with geology, resource modeling, operations, product team, engineering, and leadership teams.
Support drilling, exploration, sampling, and resource definition workflows for the Copper One project, a sedimentary copper deposit in the Lisbon Valley district of southeast Utah.
Spend time at site to understand actual field execution, contractor workflows, sample handling, geological controls, and operational constraints.
What You’ll Bring
Bachelor's degree in Geological Engineering, Mining Engineering, Geology, Earth Sciences, or a related technical discipline.
3+ years of experience in drilling, exploration, mine geology, resource definition, resource modeling, and technical field programs.
Strong understanding of drilling workflows, sample collection, assay data, QA/QC procedures, geological interpretation, and resource estimation concepts.
Ability to work with drillhole data, sample intervals, assay results, geologic sections, block models, and field operating data.
Experience with greenfield exploration, brownfield drilling, infill drilling, resource conversion, grade control, or development-stage drilling campaigns.
Experience with geological block models, resource models, drillhole databases, 3D geological modeling workflows, and resource classification concepts.
Experience with tools such as Leapfrog, Vulcan, Datamine, Deswik, Surpac, Micromine, acQuire, MX Deposit, GIS platforms, or similar systems.
Experience defining QA/QC rules, assay validation processes, reconciliation reports, drilling dashboards, or data governance workflows.
Strong interest in automation, process optimization, and building better systems for technical mining and exploration workflows.
Ability to communicate effectively with both technical geology/drilling teams and software/product teams.
Comfort translating messy field workflows into clear requirements, process maps, rules, dashboards, checks, or software specifications.
Willingness to be based within the vicinity of the Lisbon Valley / Monticello-Moab, Utah project area and spend meaningful time near the project.