Applied Scientist

Associate Data Scientist

KoBold Metals is a mineral exploration company using AI to explore for the metals we need for our transition to a low-carbon economy. KoBold’s business is discovering, defining, expanding, and developing mineral resources, and KoBold’s objective is to achieve a step-change improvement in exploration success: we aim to discover more tier 1 resources, faster, and with fewer failures.

KoBold has a global portfolio of more than 50 exploration properties targeting nickel, copper, cobalt, and lithium, which range from 100%-owned to partnerships with both majors, junior explorers, and prospectors.

Our team includes the best of the industry in exploration geoscience, data science, software engineering, operations, and business personnel. Prior to joining KoBold, KoBold team members have made nearly 20 discoveries. Our exploration programs are co-led by our geoscientists and data scientists, who develop exploration hypotheses, rigorously quantify uncertainty in our understanding of the subsurface, and design data collection programs that most effectively reduce uncertainty, drawing upon a large suite of proprietary exploration technology built by our data scientists and software engineers. Our field programs validate and improve the system and have demonstrated material improvements over conventional exploration methods

KoBold is privately held and our investors include: institutional asset managers T. Rowe Rice and Canada Pension Plan Investments; technology venture capitalists Andreessen Horowitz, Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures, BOND Capital, Standard Investments, and Sam Altman’s Apollo Projects; and leading natural resources companies Equinor, Mitsubishi, and BHP.

About the role

In this role, you will help develop software to accelerate discovery of battery metals by building a worldwide geospatial dataset that underlies our machine learning driven exploration program.

You will join an outstanding team of data scientists, geoscientists, and software engineers. You will be a core part of the data science team, and your primary role will be to integrate data into TerraShed’s^® databases using Python to perform exploratory data analysis, QA/QC, standardize, and schema structure datasets. Further, you will add to KoBold’s codebase by contributing novel algorithms that accelerate the ingestion and transformation of myriad data sets. The datasets you curate will help other KoBold Data Scientists and Geologists leverage Machine Prospector^® to solve challenging scientific problems, enabling the widespread adoption of electric vehicles.

Responsibilities

The Associate Data Scientist will:

• Process and integrate data into well-structured, curated, proprietary databases (TerraShed^®) using Python
• Explore and assess the quality of  geophysical, geochemical, geologic, and other geospatial data from around the world
• Analyze data to identify potential measurement errors, missing data, inconsistencies with other datasets
• Work on an exploration project team and help Geologists discover pertinent geospatial insights from datasets 
• Work with other Data Scientists to build predictive models for finding ore deposits
• Work with Software Engineers to improve data ingestion and data engineering infrastructure
• Support other Data Scientists and Exploration Geologists with ad hoc geospatial analyses

Qualifications

A great Associate Data Scientist candidate will have:

• At least 1 year of experience programming in Python (or other scripting  languages such as R and MATLAB), with an understanding of IDEs, data types, functions, classes, and libraries
• Experience working with geospatial datasets, with an understanding of coordinate systems and geospatial file types (vector, raster, delimited text, etc.)
• Experience using Git and GitHub to version control, contribute code, and collaborate with others on a remote repository
• Familiarity with SQL and PostgreSQL 
• Experience using geospatial visualization tools, including QGIS
• A master’s degree or higher (or a bachelor’s degree with work experience) in the geosciences, physical sciences, engineering, computer science, or mathematics 
• Drive to self-teach programming fundamentals and learn KoBold’s code repositories
• Interest in a career in Data Science, Software Engineering, or GIS
• Enjoyment in getting the details right

KoBold Metals^® is an equal opportunity workplace and an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity for people of any race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, or veteran status.

The US base salary range for this full-time exempt position is $70,000-$115,000.

Location: KoBold^® is a remote first workplace, we are open to candidates currently residing anywhere in the United States or Canada. All candidates must be authorized to legally work in either the United States for Canada