Engineering Manager, KoBold Metals
Infrastructure and Security
$190-230k
More information about location
AI-powered mineral exploration company
Open for applications
AI-powered mineral exploration company
201-500 employees
Open for applications
$190-230k
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
- 5+ years of experience in software engineering, with hands-on cloud infrastructure management and cybersecurity focus
- 2+ years of leadership experience, managing technical teams in a multidisciplinary environment
- Expertise in Python and designing and deploying systems in the cloud on AWS, GCP, or Azure and defining those systems with infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform or CloudFormation
- Proven ability to implement secure, scalable systems for data management, access, and compute
- Experience with Kubernetes and GitOps-style deployments via ArgoCD or similar
- Experience designing, deploying, and managing monitoring and alerting systems against well-defined service metrics (e.g. SLO, SLA), especially via Datadog or similar
- Experience building systems to develop, deploy, and instrument machine learning models, particularly in Kubeflow or similar frameworks
- Prior responsibility for planning and implementing information security measures
- Strong track record of working effectively with diverse stakeholders: multidisciplinary environment, diverse personalities and backgrounds
- Deeply understand the uses of KoBold’s cloud technology to enable sound decision-making about infrastructure
- Build highly effective interdisciplinary relationships with scientists and engineers across the KoBold organization so that infrastructure engineering is well integrated and effectively tailored to the computational needs of the business
- 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
- Able to balance strategic vision with tactical execution, particularly in high-stakes IT and cybersecurity contexts
- Motivated to build and maintain systems that meet challenging infrastructure requirements and to work closely with engineering colleagues on a broad set of infrastructure problems
- Focused on making decisions about risk based on practical considerations and a deep understanding of the company’s business, rather than on compliance checklists or blind adherence to a preferred set of practices
- Skilled at supporting non-engineering staff such as geologists, legal and business personnel, communicating complex technical and security concepts to non-specialists
- Versatile, resourceful, and comfortable with a fast-changing and multidisciplinary work environment
- Intuitive and empathetic, able to read people effectively and understand what’s important to them, and able to attract great talent and to build long-term relationships
- Have experience scaling infrastructure at a growing startup
What the job involves
- One of KoBold’s core beliefs is that discovering the metals —such as lithium, copper, nickel, and cobalt– critical to enabling the energy transition will require deep collaboration between humans (geologists and data scientists) and machines (software, algorithms, and machine learning pipelines)
- This Infrastructure and Security Senior Manager role will help realize this vision by leading the team at the foundation of that collaboration - supporting and securing the computational systems at KoBold
- In this role, you will be responsible for not only building and maintaining systems that enable KoBold to be a successful global exploration company - including underlying AWS infrastructure, IT and commercial software packages, and cybersecurity
- You will ensure that our computation operates securely, efficiently, and reliably and empower collaboration between geologists, data scientists, and engineers around the planet
- Reporting to the VP of Technology
- Deeply understand the uses of KoBold’s cloud technology to enable sound decision-making about infrastructure
- Build highly effective interdisciplinary relationships with scientists and engineers across the KoBold organization so that infrastructure engineering is well integrated and effectively tailored to the computational needs of the business
- Lead the team implementing and maintaining scalable, secure cloud-based systems for geoscientific data and distributed computing
- Oversee the IT team, including hardware, network configuration, and commercial software licenses
- Build on KoBold’s already strong cybersecurity posture
- Lead the week-to-week working cadence and quarterly planning process, set clear goals and timelines, and align our execution/tracking frameworks with our plans
- Design and implement infrastructure for distributed parallel ML and scientific computing
- Design, implement, and maintain security protocols for highly proprietary data
- Design components of the data system to ingest, store, process, and access a large volume and wide variety of geoscience data for both predictive modeling and visualization
- Manage a team of 5–10 engineers of varying seniority, fostering a culture of collaboration, inclusion, and accountability
- Provide actionable feedback and support the professional growth of each team member
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 9 more jobs at KoBold Metals