Staff Machine Learning Data Scientist, KoBold Metals
$200-250k
More information about location
AI-powered mineral exploration company
Be an early applicant
AI-powered mineral exploration company
201-500 employees
Be an early applicant
$200-250k
More information about location
201-500 employees
Company mission
To create value by discovering new ore deposits and expanding existing resources.
Role
Who you are
- 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
- At least 5 years of experience as a software engineer, data scientist or ML engineer, though most great candidates will have closer to 10. Recent bachelor’s/master’s/PhD candidates are unlikely to be competitive
- 2+ years managing technical teams in complex, multidisciplinary projects
- 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
- Proficiency in scaling complex data operations across distributed computing resources, using tools such as Spark or Dask
- Capacity to dive deep on novel challenging problems in applying ML 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)
- Experience with multispectral remote-sensing data from a variety of sources
- 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
What the job involves
- Reporting to the VP of Technology
- Architect, implement, and maintain foundational data science models for distributed processing of large-scale geospatial data with direct application to Kobold’s mineral exploration projects and deep collaboration with geoscientists
- In collaboration with our engineering team, build tooling to increase the velocity and rigor of our machine learning capabilities to derive insights from remote sensing data
- Improve upon current processing pipelines for lidar, high resolution imagery, and hyperspectral data
- Push the state of the art in analysis capabilities by implementing statistically rigorous spatially aware clustering, anomaly detection, and other analysis methods
- Collaborate with data scientists, geoscientists and engineers to invent and deploy algorithms that combine large and complex data sets for mineral exploration and discoveries
- Lead and grow the team of 3-6 field engineers and data scientists collecting and processing terabytes of hyperspectral and lidar data around the globe
- Run our global airborne data collection program - working closely with internal mineral exploration teams, legal, contracting, and operations as well as external aviation partners to safely and successfully deploy our custom sensors, backhaul and rapidly process data
- Lead the week-to-week working cadence and quarterly planning process - setting clear goals, timelines, and technical objectives - weighing company priorities and executing a roadmap to improve our capabilities to collect data and derive mineral exploration insights
Our take
Supported by billionaires Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, KoBold Metals utilises AI and Cloud computing techniques to assess the composition of the subsurface in order to explore metals that are used in making batteries installed in electric vehicles and clean energy technologies.
KoBold is a force in its field with significant financial backing, not just from the aforementioned tycoons, but thanks to Andreessen Horowitz, one of Silicon Valley’s leading venture capital funds. In 2019, this enabled KoBold to have funding available for four years, which, since then, has financed explorations at various locations, including Greenland.
As the climate crisis intensifies, the world has increasingly moved towards sustainability and hence demand for sustainable products like EVs has gone up, increasing the need for KoBold’s mineral exploration services. With recent approval for backing a new copper mine in Zambia, along with additional funding, the growing demand for sustainable resources positions KoBold for a promising future.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Few candidates hear
back within 2 weeks
50% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)
Jan 2025
$527m
SERIES C
Jun 2023
$195m
SERIES B
Total funding: $934.5m
Company HQ
Downtown Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
Articles
Leadership
Kurt House
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously founded a carbon Sequestration and enhanced oil recovery venture as well as a natural gas asset acquisition platform. They also worked in Private Equity and Corporate Consulting at Bain & Company and spent time as an Adjunct Professor at Stanford University.
Share this job
View 10 more jobs at KoBold Metals