About the Company

The mining industry has steadily become worse at finding new ore deposits, requiring >10X more capital to make discoveries compared to 30 years ago. The easy-to-find, near-surface deposits have largely been found, and the industry has chronically under-invested in new exploration technology, relying on the manual techniques of yesteryear – even as demand accelerates for copper, lithium, and other metals to build electric vehicles, renewable energy, and data centers.

KoBold builds AI models for mineral exploration and deploys those models—alongside our novel sensors—to guide decisions on KoBold-owned-and-operated exploration programs. In the eight years since founding, KoBold has become by far both the largest independent mineral exploration company and the largest exploration technology developer. Our data scientists and software engineers, who come from leading technology companies, jointly lead exploration programs with our renowned exploration geologists.

KoBold has proven its first discovery with materially less capital than the industry average and found one of the best copper deposits ever discovered: the copper is far more concentrated than the global average of copper mines, and this asset alone is expected to generate meaningful revenue for decades. KoBold has a portfolio of more than 80 other projects, each of which has the potential for another high-quality discovery.

KoBold is privately held; investors include institutional asset managers T. Rowe Price and Canada Pension Plan Investments; technology venture capitalists Andreessen Horowitz, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, BOND Capital, Durable Capital, StepStone, and Standard Investments; and strategic natural resources companies BHP and Mitsubishi.

About the Role

This role will be KoBold's geochemical lead for southern Africa, reporting to the Principal Geochemist and working as an embedded member of the Mingomba project team.

Mingomba is in deposit definition drilling. The assays generated there flow directly into the resource model and, ultimately, into the investment case for developing the deposit, so you will own the systems that make that data defensible: sampling protocols, quality control design, sample security, laboratory performance, and the documentation trail that stands behind a Competent Person's statement.

You will also drive geochemistry across KoBold's wider Zambian, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Namibian activities, including brownfield and greenfield copper and lithium programs, from first-pass orientation surveys through to drill-ready targets. You will work closely with project geologists, geophysicists, and data scientists, and you will be a key source of geochemical judgement for in-country teams who do not have a specialist of their own.

Responsibilities

Demonstrate in all activities a commitment to the highest standards in health and safety, environment, and community relations
Own the geochemical quality control system for the Mingomba deposit definition drilling program, working collaboratively with data scientists and software engineers on: sampling and subsampling protocol design, certified reference material, blank and duplicate insertion strategy, sample security and chain of custody, routine precision and bias monitoring, and prompt investigation and resolution of control failures
Provide independent assessment and sign-off of assay data entering mineral resource estimation, including laboratory audits, umpire and check-assay programs, inter-laboratory bias monitoring, and defensible documentation of the analytical chain to the standard expected
Ensure geochemical activity across Zambia, the DRC, and Namibia meets its regulatory and permitting obligations, including sample export and transport requirements, dangerous goods compliance, use of appropriately accredited laboratories, and the environmental baseline, acid rock drainage, and metal leaching characterisation work that supports permitting on advanced projects
Design and execute brownfield geochemical programs around Mingomba and other advanced assets, using alteration and trace element vectoring to define system footprints, test extensions along strike and at depth, and generate near-mine targets