KoBold Metals

Senior Infrastructure Engineer

Remote

Not SpecifiedCompensation
Senior (5 to 8 years), Expert & Leadership (9+ years)Experience Level
Full TimeJob Type
UnknownVisa
Mining, Biotechnology, Artificial IntelligenceIndustries

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 six 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 60 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, and Standard Investments; and natural resources companies Equinor, BHP, and Mitsubishi.

About the Role

In this role, you will partner with exploration and engineering teams to build reliable, scalable infrastructure that makes it easier to turn data and models into real-world exploration insights. You will improve observability, streamline MLOps workflows, and maintain shared tools like JupyterHub that enable faster experimentation and collaboration. Your work will help create a solid foundation for scientists and engineers to focus on discovery instead of infrastructure.

Responsibilities

  • Design, build, and operate compute infrastructure that is both scalable and reliable to support critical services.
  • Work closely with engineering teams to embed observability, reliability, and security throughout the software development process.
  • Create and maintain automation for monitoring, deployments, and incident response to keep operations efficient and predictable.
  • Lead or support capacity planning, performance reviews, and system tuning to ensure stable and efficient systems.
  • Join the on-call rotation and take part in incident response, troubleshooting, and resolution.
  • Develop and refine monitoring and alerting to catch issues early and reduce downtime.
  • Establish and maintain disaster recovery and business continuity practices that protect the organization against failures.
  • Regularly review and improve our tools and processes to strengthen system visibility and reliability.
  • Investigate points of fragility in distributed systems and understand how complex systems behave under stress in order to improve resilience.
  • Continually learn about mineral exploration through reading, discussions with exploration team members, periodic rotation on an exploration team and time in the field with geologists

Qualifications

  • 5+ years of experience as an Infrastructure Engineer, Site Reliability Engineer or in a similar role
  • Strong scripting and programming skills (Python, Go, Java or JavaScript/Node.js)
  • Experience with IaC tools like Terraform and container orchestration tools like Kubernetes and Docker
  • Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS
  • Experience operating or administering JupyterHub in a multi-user environment
  • Understanding of MLOps workflows, including model training, deployment, and related

Skills

Infrastructure
Scalability
Observability
ML pipelines
Data pipelines
Cloud infrastructure
Kubernetes
Terraform
Python
Go

KoBold Metals

AI-driven mineral exploration for clean energy

About KoBold Metals

KoBold Metals focuses on discovering new deposits of essential minerals like lithium, cobalt, copper, and nickel, which are crucial for clean energy technologies. The company employs artificial intelligence to enhance the mineral exploration process, making it more efficient and predictable. Their proprietary AI tool utilizes a concept known as Efficacy of Information (EOI) to guide data collection during exploration, helping to reduce uncertainty. KoBold invests over $60 million annually in more than 60 projects across three continents, leading extensive research and development efforts in the field. Unlike traditional exploration methods, KoBold aggregates comprehensive data about the Earth's crust's physics and chemistry, allowing for a more scientific approach to mineral discovery. The company's goal is to locate and sell mineral deposits to clean energy companies, providing them with the necessary resources while maintaining a competitive advantage in the market.

Berkeley, CaliforniaHeadquarters
2018Year Founded
$909MTotal Funding
SERIES_CCompany Stage
Data & Analytics, Energy, AI & Machine LearningIndustries
201-500Employees

Benefits

Remote Work Options
Flexible Work Hours

Risks

Increased competition from Chinese producers may impact market share.
Aggressive expansion in Zambia exposes KoBold to geopolitical risks.
Reliance on AI technology could face challenges from technological failures.

Differentiation

KoBold Metals uses AI to discover lithium, cobalt, copper, and nickel deposits.
Their proprietary AI tool, Efficacy of Information, reduces exploration uncertainty.
KoBold aggregates comprehensive data on Earth's crust for precise mineral exploration.

Upsides

KoBold raised $537M, planning to convert projects into mining sites.
Partnerships with tech giants enhance AI capabilities in mineral exploration.
Growing demand for AI-driven tools aligns with sustainable mining practices.

Land your dream remote job 3x faster with AI