Hardware Development Engineer, KoBold Metals
Advanced Technology Group
$150-190k
In addition, KoBold offers company equity
More information about location
1+ day a week in office (Berkeley, CA)
AI-powered mineral exploration company
Be an early applicant
AI-powered mineral exploration company
201-500 employees
Be an early applicant
$150-190k
In addition, KoBold offers company equity
More information about location
1+ day a week in office (Berkeley, CA)
201-500 employees
Company mission
To create value by discovering new ore deposits and expanding existing resources.
Role
Who you are
- A great Hardware Development Engineer candidate will have:
- A successful track record of developing and deploying complex state-of-the-art automated scientific equipment
- Experience deploying and supporting complex equipment to remote sites including commissioning, validation, training and monitoring
- The ability to simultaneously and gracefully wear many hats including technical lead, project manager, product manager, and hands on in-the-weeds engineer
- Excellent communication skills for a highly interdisciplinary workplace
- Technical skills, including extensive experience with:
- Leading teams to execute end-to-end technical product development from concept through testing and deployment
- Physical measurement and data analysis systems
- Applying scientific knowledge to identify and prototype emerging technologies
- Automation, systems integration and data acquisition
- Mechanical engineering, CAD, analysis, prototyping
- Vendor selection and management
- 3rd party contractor selection and management
- Work practices and motivation:
- Ability and desire to take ownership and responsibility of large projects
- 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 hardware experts
- 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
- Solutions oriented, positive, and collaborative
- It is also helpful but not required to have experience with:
- Product management for scientific hardware
- Optics, electronics, and instrumentation
- Intellectual curiosity and eagerness to learn about all aspects of mineral exploration, particularly in the geology domain. Enjoys constantly learning such that you are driving insights through using our tools in exploration and willing to work directly with geologists in the field
- Ability to explain technical problems to and collaborate on solutions with domain experts who are not hardware engineers. 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 an evolving 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
- A valid passport and willingness to travel to observe our work at Mingomba or at an exploration site around the world. Travel for this role typically does not exceed __ trips per year
What the job involves
- This role will drive the design, development, and deployment of a next-generation hardware technology that will transform how KoBold collects and interprets exploration data
- This role is ideal for a mechanical engineer who thrives at the intersection of science, engineering, and data and is excited about bringing new technology to life
- In this role, you will lead the full technical lifecycle of a critical new hardware system: from concept and prototyping through validation, automation, manufacturing, and deployment in the field
- You will work closely with our data scientists, engineers, and geoscientists to design instrumentation that produces rich, high-quality datasets, feeding the machine learning models that drive KoBold’s mineral exploration around the world
- You will be a key member of a hardware development team and contributor to various novel hardware projects
- You will also help to build the hardware development discipline and organization at Kobold, contributing to a culture and process that will make our engineering efforts innovative, scalable and repeatable
- You will report to the Head of Hardware and join a world-class team of data scientists, engineers and geoscientists developing novel technologies to accelerate the discovery of critical minerals for batteries and electrification
- Lead the technical development of a novel, automated sensing and imaging system from concept and prototype to deployment of multiple systems in remote field sites. Coordinate with and orchestrate internal and external resources across hardware and software engineering to deliver
- Lead system architecture definition, navigating technical tradeoffs through rigorous research and analysis and balancing cost, complexity, and timeline
- Collaborate with KoBold's data systems and exploration teams to integrate the new data stream into KoBold's proprietary data system and ensure usability for exploration projects
- Build a deep understanding of mineral exploration science and operations to ensure the system and data generated meet user needs and field requirements
- Build partnerships, source, and contract with service providers and vendors to develop hardware solutions that solve KoBold exploration needs
- Create effective product plans and mechanical, mechatronic and automation designs - from concept through prototyping and production
- Contribute engineering expertise, analysis, and design to various hardware projects across Kobold
- Help develop Kobold’s hardware development tools and processes
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
Company
Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)
Nov 2025
$163m
LATE VC
Jan 2025
$527m
SERIES C
Total funding: $1.1bn
Company HQ
Downtown Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
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.
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