Senior Project Planner

Senior Project Planner

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 Position

In this role, you will be primarily responsible for directly building and managing KoBold’s exploration project schedules, budgets, and forecasts. This position will report to the COO, will work with the various regional exploration Field Operations Managers, and will require coordination with the Finance Team and the Chief Strategy Officer. This position will often require direct engagement with third-party partners and vendors to evaluate project planning options.

Responsibilities

The Senior Project Planner will:

• Work with COO, exploration project leads, and Field Operations teams to build and maintain robust, dynamic project schedules, budgets, and forecasts.
• With the Finance team, continuously track expenditures against budgets and update project cost forecasts
• Help the leaders of each exploration team prepare their requests for authorization and budget to execute their intended exploration programs
• Conduct exploration project scenario assessments and help shape our operations strategy (e.g., in-house vs. general contractor, buy vs. rent, transportation options to remote camps)  e.g., (a) evaluate cost and schedule implications for different fuel delivery options to remote camps across multiple field seasons; (b) assist generation of cost and schedule estimates for exploration program for use in opportunity acquisition analysis)

• Build and maintain KoBold global project costs database
• Build and maintain central tracking of schedule and budget across KoBold’s global portfolio of exploration projects

Qualifications

The candidate must have:

• B.A. or B.S. in a quantitative discipline (e.g., engineering or physical science)
• At least 5 years experience of project engineering and/or planning experience in mineral exploration
• Proficient in traditional project management tools (e.g., spreadsheet, project planning software) plus a willingness and ability to work using cloud-based planning tools, learn new tools,  and integrate with KoBold tools and databases
• Flexibility to accommodate calls with team members and vendors overseas
• Interest in contributing broadly to the success of the company and eager to pitch in where needed
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A great candidate will also have/be:

• Experience in both project engineering and project planning in both mineral exploration and mine development projects
• Great intuition on project development and project costs
• Experience working with accounting software
• Highly self-motivated and autonomous, able to work with limited supervision
• Excited about working on a wide range of problems
• Well-organized and a proactive communicator
• Careful and consistent about getting the details right
• International experience

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.

This position is full-time, exempt.

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